


Kitana

by de_la_cruz87



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Canon Compliant, Found Family, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:55:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/de_la_cruz87/pseuds/de_la_cruz87
Summary: A Dizzy story---Simpleandstraightforwardhad, in hindsight, not been accurate terms to describe adopting Justin.Better options would have been - rewarding, humbling, fulfilling, exciting, gratifying, beautiful, worthwhile.Andhard.Harder than she had realised it could be.---A four-part mini fic exploring Justin's adoption into the Jensen family.Or, the missing parent chapter from Dizzy, told from Lainie's perspective.
Relationships: Justin Foley & The Jensens
Comments: 39
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will link in with Dizzy, Joyride, and the Clubhouse, so while it is canon compliant and should work as a stand-alone, if anything sounds strange or non-canon, it is likely a reference to one of these fics.
> 
> The canon timeline setting is season 2 to pre-season 3. Like Dizzy, this fic mostly covers scenes that I had hoped for as part of Justin's adoption storyline in the show.
> 
> Although this is easily the most positive story I've ever written, this is a fic mostly about Justin, who has a confronting and complicated canon story, which is referenced here. Please read with caution.

Lainie loved football.

It often surprised people who knew her only as the petite but feisty mother or the professional and measured lawyer. Who knew her because she volunteered as treasurer of the PTA while Clay was in elementary school and manned the cupcake stall at the community fundraising fairs held at Liberty every year because no one else wanted to be trapped next to Karen Dempsey’s dumpling stand all day. Who knew her from the same neighbourhood route that she jogged four mornings a week – except on Sundays if the weather was fine, when she treated herself to a scenic run up to the lookout point on the cliff edge that overlooked the county. Who knew that she volunteered every year for the firm’s social committee and put weeks of work and thought into carefully curated and detailed themes and decorations for their end of year Christmas party. Who might have even known that she committed to no less than one date night every month, because Matt firmly believed that it was important to work on keeping romance in a relationship, and she didn’t even mind that they sat at the same table at the same restaurant every time, because it made him happy to make the same joke to the waitstaff about the lobster dish, even though at this point, they just rolled their eyes, because he never ordered it anyway. 

The startled looks she got when she burst upright from her seat in the stands at the local high school football games and unreservedly bellowed her support for well executed play always made her smile a little.

It was the main reason why Clay refused to attend games with her any more.

She had hoped that, when he reached high school, Clay might have an interest in playing, but when she had floated the idea of trying out in his freshman year, suggesting that a sport would contribute to a well-rounded college application portfolio, Clay had only stared at her across the breakfast table.

“Mom,” he had said, flatly. “Football is for dumb guys who like to headbutt each other, but can’t maintain more than a C- average.” He shook his head, muttering to himself, “Probably because of the headbutting.”

Exasperated, she had looked at Matt and, as was generally his response when Clay blurted out some bald and borderline nasty truth, he raised his shoulder in a shrug, as if to say _well, he’s not **wrong**_.

Maybe not, but still.

Despite Clay’s disinterest, Lainie purchased a Liberty Tigers beanie and scarf, and attended as many home games as she could make it to. Sometimes Matt would join her, more for the company and to spend time doing something together that one of them had an interest in than any actual investment in the game, at least half of the conversation between them consisting of him questioning what had just happened and her explaining a play or an umpire’s call. She liked that he wanted to share something that she enjoyed, even if it meant that, in exchange, she sometimes had to sit through movies that bored her to tears or attend literary presentations and conventions that were full of men with patches on the elbows of their jackets and women who looked like librarians. 

When her father came out to visit sometimes around the holidays, he would come along to games with her, and would watch with keen attention, his blue eyes following the players up and down the field.

“That Dempsey kid has a hell of an arm,” he would comment, or, with a sympathetic wince that deepened the crinkle of the laughter lines at the corners of his eyes and a rueful chuckle, “Jesus, that safety is a vicious little S.O.B, isn’t he? Lucky he’s on our side, huh?”

Sharing the games with her father, walking down the stone steps of the bleachers while the people around them bubbled with talk about how Bryce Walker was the best captain the team had been blessed with in over a decade and was sure to lead the team to victory in the state finals, waiting by the fence while he chatted with the coaches, commending them on well-chosen plays and pointing out key players and areas of focus, she felt the warm familiarity of her childhood.

After her parents had divorced when she was ten, they had shared custody of Lainie and her sister, Bridget, the two girls shuttling back and forth between neighbourhoods eleven minutes apart – Monday through Thursday morning with their mother, Thursday evening through Monday morning with their father - until her freshman year, when her father had been tapped for his dream job, coaching the defensive team as part of the football department for the University of Southern California. It would require relocating from Sacramento - where they had grown up, where he had been coaching high school football since before she was born, where their mother worked as an aide and advisor with the mayor’s office, where the family dog that had died of old age when she was seven was buried beneath the tree in the backyard of the house their mother had kept in the divorce, and where all of her friends lived and went to school - to Los Angeles, where her father had secured a two bedroom apartment near to the campus. If both girls decided they wanted to make the move, they would have to share.

The idea didn’t bother Lainie. She chose Los Angeles. 

Bridget, a senior by then, decided to stay in Sacramento to finish out her final year of high school, and Lainie had cried as she helped her sister pack up her room at their father’s house to move in full time with their mother. Bridget, always the more balanced of them, sat on the bed beside her, put her arm around her shoulders and said, simply,

“It’s OK.”

A week later, Lainie and her father climbed into his station wagon after the moving truck pulled away from the curb outside his house, and she looked one last time at the **sold** sticker plastered on the For Sale sign in the front yard before they drove away.

Los Angeles was new and exciting, and she had no issues making friends, joining Spanish club and trying out for the junior cheerleading squad. She wasn’t especially coordinated, but she was blonde and small enough to be lifted, which seemed to be the main criteria for selection. More alluring than the hip cafés and restaurants, the trendy outlet stores and the bustle and thrill of the city, or even the parties and boys in letterman jackets that her cheer uniform opened up access to, was the football field on the nearby college campus.

Lainie would catch the bus after school over to USC, and would sit in the bleachers or sometimes even on the bench among the players, her coat zipped up under her chin and a scarf wrapped high and tight enough to protect her ears in the winter and a baseball cap pulled down over her honey-wheat hair in the warmer months, watching the teams run drills and practice plays, discuss strategy and field placements, sometimes fight with each other but always make up, and it was intoxicating. She loved the competitiveness and the aggression, the artful skill of each manoeuvre, the thoughtful plotting of each play. Sitting at a table on the sidelines beside a plastic keg of water, her homework laid out dutifully in front of her but her eyes and attention on the field, Lainie watched her father call out instructions and encouragement. The players looked at him with reverence and respect, giving him their full attention when he spoke, and their best effort on the field. Sometimes, it felt like having two dozen brothers, because for some of those boys, her dad was the closest thing they had to a father.

For the most part, out of deference to him, they even maintained their manners around her, well aware that being caught checking out coach’s daughter would earn them an afternoon of pushing the weighted sled up and down the length of the field in punishment.

There had been that one time, in senior year, at that party with the running back who looked like he might have been a good kisser but really, really wasn’t…

But her father never found out about that – or at least she had thought as much, until he had cocked an eyebrow at her years later during an exasperated video call where she had lamented her fruitless efforts to get Clay to stop hiding things from her. 

And all of that had been fun, but it paled in comparison to being part of the crowd at the college football games.

Lainie would don all of her red and gold Trojans gear, from ribbons in her hair to war-paint on her cheeks, and from the stands, she could barrack with the best of them, the petite blonde unleashing tirades against biased umpires and elated screams as she climbed up onto the bench for a better view of a painstakingly rehearsed play, her enthusiasm documented in photographs that featured in a handful of campus newspaper issues. Her father saved every one, and had even framed one photograph that had featured on the front page, of her roaring passionately, fists raised skyward as she leapt to her feet beside Bridget, who had been visiting for the weekend and sat with an embarrassed smile and a little Trojans flag clutched awkwardly in one hand. When she was younger, it had made Lainie blush a little, seeing it on the top shelf of his trophy cabinet, displayed amongst the awards and accolades and framed newspaper articles documenting his achievements. 

It had been the first thing that Matt noticed, the day that she brought him to meet her father.

Through high school, Lainie had dated on and off – a boy from the track team, the captain of the soccer squad, her lab partner from chemistry class and, in her senior year, the valedictorian, although he was far more interested in listening to himself speak than anything she had to say and once she had realised it, she had stuck it out only long enough to gain access to his connections to the senior faculty for college recommendations – but when she had been accepted into Sanderson’s law program, she had committed herself to focussing on her studies. Football was dear to her heart, but she dreamed of a career where she could use that fiery passion to excel and achieve something meaningful. Her mother had taught her, through the demonstration of her own career, not to be intimidated by wealth or status or corporate boys’ clubs; if she put in the work and earned her seat at the table, she was every bit as entitled to it as anyone else. 

They say opposites attract, and perhaps there was some truth in it, because Matt wasn’t like her.

He wasn’t like any of the boys Lainie had dated before, either. 

He was calm and gentle and measured. He had a dorky sense of humour, as if he were genetically predisposed to spout dad jokes, and a quiet intelligence. Matt was just as passionate about literature as she was about football. He could talk for hours, animatedly and with boundless love and enthusiasm, about Dickens and Tolstoy and the Brontes. Through him, she became familiar with names like Dostoevsky, Bowen and Heller. The girl who stamped her feet harder and shouted louder than anyone else in the stands found herself spending summer afternoons in the off-campus apartment that he shared with two other literature majors, perched on the window-sill in an attempt to catch a whisper of breeze, sneaking glances at the willowy, brunette boy who moved about the small kitchen, making a _late_ breakfast of French toast with caramelized peaches – a recipe he had found browsing an outdated magazine in the dentist’s office waiting room and wanted to try – his well-loved copy of _To the Lighthouse_ in her hands, the page edges thumbed soft over many reads.

Her father had raised an eyebrow at her over Matt’s shoulder when, despite that his tone made it quite clear that he had no idea what he was looking at, he made an effort to comment on the healthy collection of accolades and trophies in the display cabinet in the small dining room. Matt wasn’t the kind of boy her father was used to her bringing home, either, but his affection and respect for Lainie were clear and unwavering, and won her father over. 

Over the years, despite their differences, they became close, and Lainie supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Matt had always lamented that his own father, an aeronautical engineer with no understanding or interest in creativity or the written word outside of maintenance manuals and P&ID’s, had never been interested in trying to find a common ground between them, and her father was a practiced surrogate parent to fatherless sons. 

When they were married, her father had walked her down the aisle, and when he reached out to shake Matt’s hand as they arrived at the altar, Matt had taken his hand to pull him into a hug. 

When Clay was born, the people responsible for the most emotional tears when they came to visit her in the maternity ward were -  
1\. Matt and her father  
2\. The student midwife who had shadowed her pregnancy  
3\. Bridget  
4\. Lainie  
\- in that order.

And when her father suffered a sudden heart attack standing on the edge of the field during a Tuesday afternoon practice session, two weeks before Clay’s fourteenth birthday, and was not able to be revived, Matt stood at the front of the church with her at the funeral, and when she was overcome with tears, delivered the rest of the eulogy she had written with heartfelt respect and sorrow.

Lainie hadn’t been certain that she wanted to keep attending football games, after her father passed. Part of her wanted to pack away that love and passion, and preserve it with his memory. It had been Matt who had encouraged her to keep going.

“He wouldn’t have wanted you to give up something you love,” he said, reaching to squeeze her hand. “That you both loved.”

He was right, of course.

Lainie put on her scarf and her beanie, and she kept going. 

So, the first time she met Justin Foley – an unkempt boy in grubby clothes with a dirty mop of dark curls falling across his forehead and a rough, painful cough rattling deep in his chest, who had apparently been smuggled into Clay’s bedroom days earlier and stowed away there since – the first thought that crossed her mind was,

_Liberty Tigers._

_Number twenty-one._

_Foley._

He certainly didn’t _look_ like the wide receiver she had watched play for the JV team for the last two years, quick and feisty, not as wantonly destructive as some of the other boys, who seemed to treat the game like some version of a demolition derby, but nimble and perceptive, ducking out of the way of tackles and holds thrown his way by players twice his size and sacrificing personal glory to pass the ball and allow his teammates to secure more advantageous plays. This boy looked as if he had been discarded to the gutter six months ago and hadn’t managed to claw his way free since, battered and weathered, and barely recognisable as what he had once been. 

And yet, he cut in to defend Clay, handing the advantage to the other boy, painting him as a saviour, who had selflessly and single-handedly rescued him from the wreckage of his life after he had voluntarily slammed his fist down on the self-destruct button.

Lainie wasn’t sure that Clay deserved the high praise proffered, but despite that, and with deliberate effort, she shoved down the hesitations that the logical part of her mind produced in neatly organised and dot-pointed reams, and allowed herself to see him only for what he was.

A boy who needed a mother. 

~

If Lainie had Matt’s creativity and Clay’s problem-solving ability, she thought that she would use them to invent a reset button.

She imagined that she could have made millions, marketing it to parents everywhere. 

Certainly, she could have used one over the years. 

The time that she turned away from the change table to grab a clean change of clothes when Clay was four months old and had busted out the leg of his diaper, and he had rolled right off of the table and onto the floor. He was absolutely fine, despite his red-faced wailing, but she had felt like the world’s worst mother for days.

The argument she and Matt had gotten into after they had been called into a meeting by the school early in Clay’s freshman year, because the faculty had noticed that Clay was often tired and distracted in class, and anxious and defensive when he wasn’t, and they thought he should be referred for a mental health assessment. Really, all either of them had been was frightened and guilty, angry at themselves that a relative stranger had alerted them to Clay struggling before they had identified it themselves, and it had taken a night of defensive bickering and sleeping in separate rooms before they had met in the kitchen the following morning, hugged, apologised, and made an appointment with their family doctor to have Clay referred to a psychologist. 

The last conversation she had had with her father – it hadn’t been bad, she didn’t regret it, but she would have given almost anything to have known that it was the last time, and to have lingered in that last hug they shared on the front porch, the smell of his cologne and the press of his arms around her, the kiss he dropped on her forehead, and that final ‘love ya, Lains’, before he had climbed into his car to drive back to Los Angeles. 

The fear that she allowed to claw its way into her thoughts, when the disapproving looks and thinly veiled judgement she had been faced with when she had advised the firm that Justin had been located and was staying with her had been followed that evening by the same expression on Matt’s face, as he asked her whether she knew that Sonya planned to ask Clay about the night he had spent with Hannah in Jeff Atkins’ basement. She hadn’t – and she told him as much – but if she was honest with herself, if she were in Sonya’s position, she would have asked the same questions, and for that, she felt nauseous with guilt.

Lainie regretted that she had masked that fear and guilt with anger, and allowed her worry about being able to continue to provide her family with the livelihoods they had become accustomed with to seem more important than simply _providing_ for them. Justin included. 

If she could have, she would have punched that reset button and taken back the argument she knew that he must have overheard, that must have seemed alarmingly like home. Although not fuelled by narcotics or alcohol or both, they danced around a topic she imagined, heartbreakingly, must have been familiar to Justin – they argued over him. 

She wished that they could have hidden their shock and hesitation better, that they had been able to see what he was, _who_ he was, in those first few days, when it had become obvious that the flu was a childish attempt to excuse symptoms of heroin withdrawal, and both she and Matt wondered, with fear and anger, and out loud, what they had gotten themselves into. 

She wished that Justin could have been hers, from that moment in the living room, when he had sat on their cream sofa in dirty jeans and one of Clay’s sweaters and told them that he had nowhere else to go. She wished he had been hers, then, and every one of the seventeen years that preceded that night. 

In the absence of a miracle invention that would allow her a do-over or gift her the second son she hadn’t known she had loved, or even wanted, until she had him, Lainie tried to make it up to Justin.

She wasn’t a shopper – Matt could happily wile away an afternoon leisurely browsing department store menswear and cologne counters, while she often found herself sitting on the uncomfortable sofas strategically provided for bored husbands and boyfriends, using the time to catch up on her emails from her phone - but Lainie spent an entire morning at the mall, filling the trunk of the Prius with her purchases before she headed back to the house. 

“Hi, Justin,” she announced brightly but slightly uncertainly as she tapped awkwardly at Clay’s open bedroom door, her hands weighed with shopping bags. They were still a little hesitant around one another at that stage, functional strangers living like a temporary family, completely unaware of one another’s boundaries and tells. “I got you a few things.”

Justin, sitting on the sofa in Clay’s bedroom, looked up from the comic he was reading while Clay was showering, his expression wide-eyed with instinctive panic, as if he had been caught doing something that he knew was against the rules.

Honestly, Lainie wouldn’t have been all that surprised if Clay had some sort of white-glove decree regarding his comic books. He could be… _particular_.

Justin, dressed in his own jeans – still grubby despite that she had laundered them twice and soaked them in stain remover in between – and one of Clay’s borrowed t-shirts, watched her quietly as she smiled at him, crossing to the opposite side of the room.

“I didn’t know what colours or styles you like, so I just got some plain things, for now,” she said, putting the bags down on Clay’s bed and beginning to unpack them. Collared shirts in subdued shades of blue, red and grey, two pairs of chinos in neutral tones, a fresh pair of jeans with no tears – not even fashionable ones, plain t-shirts in white and navy, several pairs of cotton socks. “I checked the sizes on the clothes in the laundry basket,” she continued, reaching for the next bag, while Justin sat quietly on the couch behind her, cheeks growing pink. She unloaded packages of boxer briefs, a blue and white toothbrush, a comb and an electric shaving kit. “I wasn’t sure of your shoe size, and I didn’t want to guess – there’s nothing worse than shoes that are too small – so, I thought we could go to the sporting goods store out by the Walplex this afternoon, and you can try them on-“

Lainie turned, still talking, her hands full with a stack of exercise books for school and a smartphone the same model as Clay’s, pre-loaded at the Apple store with a SIM card linked to their family plan, and realised that Justin was staring at her, and looked a little ill. 

It was a lot later – much later than she wished it had taken for her to realise – that Lainie understood that she didn’t need to tell _him_ what it was like to wear shoes that were a size or two too small.

It wasn’t the first and was far, far from the last well-intentioned comment that landed exactly wrong, a throw that soared past its target and directly into the hands of the opposition team. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Justin insisted, his gaze unsettled, flicking from the spread of new things on Clay’s bed, _his_ things, to her face, and the comic book in his hands. A sudden, bright smile lit his face, hesitant and placating, as he realised he might have offended her, and rushed to add, “Really. I have clothes. And Clay and I are pretty much the same size. I can just borrow some things he doesn’t wear, until-“

He cut himself off there, his gaze settling on her face for a moment before sliding away uncertainly, and Lainie realised that the reaction that had sparked, unexpectedly and powerfully, deep in her chest, had registered in her expression.

He didn’t plan on staying.

And, inexplicably, unquestionably – it hurt, because she wished that he would.

She knew it was silly and, aside from that, wrong. It had been only a couple of days, and in that time, the laundry loads had increased and they were going through groceries much more quickly. There were lights left on when nobody was in rooms – a habit they had eventually broken Clay out of only by resorting to docking his allowance every time he carelessly walked away without switching one off, explaining patiently that if he was going to waste electricity, he would be required to contribute toward paying the bill. One morning, the hot water was depleted by the time she went to take a shower, and one afternoon, when she got home from work, the television was turned up to a deafening volume, and somehow, the boys still managed to yell at an even higher decibel, elbowing each other and attempting to slap the video game controllers from the other’s hands. 

Despite that they had apparently been living in close quarters in Clay’s bedroom for days, the boys bickered incessantly, Clay’s temper flaring with jealousy and frustration at inconsequential triggers – the phone call that she made to Liberty to confirm Justin would be returning to school and request a copy of his schedule and an appointment with the school counsellor to determine the requirements to get him back on track for graduation, a conversation between Matt and Justin about Blade Runner, Justin’s insistence that Clay should join them for pancakes because, in his colourfully expressed opinion, they were “fucking amazing”. 

Still, somehow, all those irritating things – it was kind of nice. 

Justin had been delivered upon them with grim purpose – to testify in the wrongful death suit brought by the parents of Hannah Baker. And as she and Matt struggled beneath the weight of that and everything that came with it – the sudden unexpected responsibility for a teenage boy who was not only not their child, but also recently homeless, the self-confessed son of a junkie, and inextricably bound with the story of Hannah Baker and the choice she had made to take her own life – those little frustrations felt somehow light and buoyant and _normal_. 

Lainie didn’t want them to stop.

And she knew she shouldn’t think like that. 

He was someone else’s child, and regardless of what she thought of them as parents, she had an obligation to do her utmost to return him to his family. 

Still…

“Until?” she prompted gently, making sure to school her features and steady her voice.

Justin raised his shoulders in a shrug that aimed for unaffected but didn’t quite achieve it.

“I get a job, and a place. Like, rent a room, or something.” His blue eyes swung back toward her, bright with defiance, and all Lainie could think was how he looked so, so young. “I appreciate the help. But I’ll be OK.” His voice was hard, but brittle, the foundations beneath his certainty cracked and crumbling. “I’m used to being on my own.”

She didn’t doubt that was true. 

And it broke her heart.

“Justin, sweetheart,” Lainie said, and he seemed almost to suppress a flinch, as if the term of endearment were as sharp and dangerous as a threatening tone or a raised fist. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. And while you’re here, we’d like you to be comfortable.”

His shoulders rounded, contrite and uncomfortable, and he nodded quickly.

“I know. I just-“ he hesitated, bit his lip, and looked at her, giving in. “I know. Thank you.”

~

When Matt called her the morning after she arrived at her sister’s apartment to let her know that Justin had gone missing overnight, Lainie panicked.

 _He’s not your child_ , she reminded herself. _He’s scarcely even a child at all._

“Should we call the police?” she asked, swallowing against the waver in her voice, and she could hear the reassuring smile in Matt’s reply, offered despite the battle they had waged the evening before, and even though she couldn’t see it.

“I think it’s a little soon for that,” he said evenly. “I’ve called and left him a message. Clay’s texted him. We’re not sure he still has the phone, but let’s wait and see if he shows up on his own,” he suggested. “Maybe he just has some things to figure out.”

Maybe.

She didn’t worry any less.

The knock-down, drag-out fight she and Matt had gotten into over everything – Clay’s secrets and distrust, the trial, the tapes, the firm, Justin – had left her weary and fragile, following a humiliating and tense meeting with the senior partners, who had demanded an explanation for how watermarked copies of the Hannah Baker tapes had found their way online, and why _The Register_ had been the ones to call and tell them about it. She was not the only one with access, and not the only one questioned, but she _was_ the only one who was certain she knew the identity of the culprit, and she suspected that the partners knew it, too.

No one in the firm was under thirty or _woke_ enough to use a hashtag like **#Justice4Hannah**.

The partners had suggested that she take a week off to _consider how she would like to move forward from this incident_.

At the time, it had encompassed her thoughts, sweeping every other concern aside. Matt’s job at Sanderson was secure and fairly paid, but she had been the main breadwinner since she had passed the bar exam. It had never been an issue between them, Matt always smiled and shrugged when someone who didn’t know him well enough to understand that he was far too laid-back to feel emasculated over income passed comment, but they still had a mortgage, car loans, insurance policies and bills to pay, like anyone else. This kind of indiscretion, even if Lainie hadn’t been directly responsible for uploading the tapes herself, could not only get her fired, it could get her reported, fined, and disbarred. 

Not that Clay appreciated that.

By providing for him, trying to protect him, apparently, she was _ruining his fucking life_.

Lainie hadn’t seen Matt snap at Clay the way he had that night since Clay was five and had almost run out into the road in front of an oncoming car. Matt had snatched him by the shoulder just in time, and had gripped him by the elbows with hands shaking with fear, demanding to know what he was thinking, as Clay simply blinked at him, mutely, and then burst into tears. 

Hearing that Justin had left sometime during the night, Lainie’s heart crumpled with guilt and sorrow. It was an argument they shouldn’t have had, not in the kitchen, not in voices raised and shaking with emotion, not in front of Clay and, undoubtedly, within earshot of Justin. 

They had to come up with a solution to all of this, somehow, but in that moment, it had simply been too much. 

The boys were too finely attuned to the agitation between them for anything to be resolved while they all existed under the same roof, while she and Matt slept in the same bed, each of them tossing and turning, minds churning with concern over different things – employment, obligations, income, protecting their family – and the same things, too – Clay. Justin. The right thing to do, their capacity to help, or lack thereof, because what in the world did they know about how to help a functionally orphaned seventeen-year-old drug addict?

She needed space to think, and the boys needed a calm presence in the house. 

Even if they could agree on nothing else, they both acknowledged that the best choice to provide that was Matt. 

But they hadn’t counted on Justin disappearing. 

“Should I come home?” Lainie asked, part of her willing him to say ‘yes’, part of her frightened that he would, because she wasn’t sure she would be able to agree if he did. 

“When you’re ready,” Matt said, reliably measured in his response. “There isn’t much we can do for now, anyway. I’ll keep you updated.”

After they hung up, Lainie stared down at her coffee and barely touched raisin toast, and wished, so hard that her heart swelled with it, that she could have spoken to her father. 

“What are we doing?” she wondered aloud, raising her eyes to her sister, standing on the opposite side of the kitchen counter, cradling a mug of chai tea in both hands. “Honestly. What in the world are we thinking, Didge?”

Bridget raised her shoulder in a simple shrug. She was still dressed in her pyjamas, an old Trojans sweater pulled on over the top, and her flaxen curls bundled into a knot on top of her head. 

“That a kid showed up on your doorstep in need,” she responded, cocking an eyebrow. “Not rocket science, Lains.”

Perhaps not, from her point of view.

Bridget had put her degree in psychology to use as soon as she left college, starting out in social work, moving around between clinics and shelters in Sacramento, then Stockton and Modesto, before partnering with the police department in Oakland, assisting with cases involving children and teens under the age of eighteen. After a decade of working with witnesses, victims and perpetrators, she had transferred over to the corrections system, assessing and preparing juvenile offenders coming up for parole and release, counselling them through their reintegration into their families and communities, working with those who were released into the custody of the state, supporting kids through the tumultuous churn of their short and chaotic lives. 

If anyone could understand, it was Bridget.

And still…

“He’s not just a kid,” Lainie insisted, and had to swallow hard against all of the words that wanted to spill from her immediately, to explain what exactly he was – homeless and addicted, abused and abandoned, an accessory to sexual assault, frightened and lonely and more desperate for affection than she had ever seen in a boy his age, eager to please and enthusiastic but guarded and secretive, grateful and humble and sweet and funny, rough edged and tough but, underneath that, so soft and vulnerable and damaged that it scared her. He was so _much_ , of so many things, and that was only what he had revealed in a couple of days. Any more than that, and Lainie feared they might drown in all that he was. And yet, part of her knew, she would do it, willingly. She looked at her sister, helplessly. “What am I getting us into?”

Bridget sipped from her mug, the morning sunlight pouring in through the window behind her fragmented by the collection of eclectic windchimes she had hung and lighting her hair to gleaming spun gold. 

“It’s hereditary,” she offered, her eyes bright with amusement behind her glasses. “Our family, we adopt strays. It’s what we do. No point in fighting it.”

That was true. 

Growing up, their kitchen table had always been crowded, chairs pulled in from the dining room, even sun-chairs brought inside from the garage and unfolded to make space for the friends and neighbourhood kids she and Bridget would bring home. There was always enough food for anyone who was hungry, their mother working miracles to stretch the dish as far as it needed to go. 

There had been so many people at their father’s funeral – over a decade of students from USC, and even a generous handful of those he had taught and coached at high school, who travelled all the way from Sacramento to attend the service – they had poured out onto the stairs outside once standing room had been exhausted in the church. 

Lainie supposed she had become so used to it being just the three of them – her, Matt, and Clay – that she had forgotten how it felt to have a full table.

And she didn’t want to let that feeling go again.

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

Her sister smiled.

“He’ll come back,” Bridget said, simply and with certainty. “And instead of worrying about whether he will, I think a better use of this time the firm has so graciously gifted you-“ she wagged an eyebrow, the sarcasm dripping from her words unsurprising, considering the kindest words she had ever used to describe the partners Lainie worked for were probably ‘soulless corporate vampires’. “-is making a plan for what you’re going to do when he does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading.
> 
> Special thanks to comfortwriter28 for the beta checking and chats, beekitties for the concept, and to Filisa and Bavish. This is my first fic since having a baby and the support and encouragement from each of you has meant the world to me. 
> 
> I hope everyone is keeping well <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lainie struggles to find a way to connect with Justin and help him feel that he belongs.

Bridget was right, of course.

She was a big sister, after all – it was in the job description.

Matt texted on Tuesday morning to let her know that Justin had returned, showing up at breakfast with an awkward smile, which Matt had answered by setting a plate loaded with French toast in front of him with little fanfare. 

Although Lainie’s first instinct was to rush back, to be with her boys, Bridget proposed casually that she stay another few days.

“Let’s not overwhelm the kid,” she suggested, pouring them both a glass of wine later that afternoon. “He’s used to being on his own. Give him a few days to get settled back in.” She handed Lainie one glass, brushing a loose curl out of her eyes and taking a fortifying gulp from her own as she joined her on the sofa, tucking one foot beneath her as she sat. “In the meantime, and Lains-“ she looked at her seriously. “-I mean this in the most respectful and supportive way possible. Let’s chat about how you’re going to get Clay back in front of Dr Ellman.”

On Thursday night, armed with resources and recommendations and a plan of action for both boys, Lainie headed home. She and Matt had kept in contact by phone and text, and still, it was a warm relief when he met her on the porch, reaching to take her bag as she came up the stairs, and set it aside to enclose her in a gentle hug. She had folded into the embrace, half-wishing that she had returned sooner, even as she realised that the time and distance was what made the firm press of his arms around her all the sweeter. 

Clay’s suspicious reception the following morning was unsurprising. It still stung a little, but not as much as seeing the bruises on the boys, their fumbling lies to explain them away, or the dull plum-coloured track mark at the crook of Justin’s arm. Although she trembled inside, Lainie reminded herself to hold steady and firm, reassuring Justin when he offered an apology for the disruption his presence had caused. She wasn’t supposed to – it could be seen as a conflict of interest, and she was already skating on thin ice with the partners – but he was so selflessly and single-mindedly determined to testify to what Bryce Walker had done to Jessica Davis that Lainie couldn’t _not_ go to court and support him. Matt had already taken a vacation day to accompany Clay when he had testified, but he booked another, because the painful but blunt reality was – Justin didn’t have anyone else.

Lainie found herself unexpectedly surprised by how proud she felt, watching Justin speak clearly and confidently, any hesitation in his voice a product of the subject matter and not his willingness to admit to what he had done, and what he had witnessed. 

Sitting in the gallery, Lainie thought to herself, for the first time - _that’s my boy_.

And then, cruelly, Justin was gone again. 

It took four weeks of active, tireless work, taking advantage of every minute and tapping into every resource available to her, to have Justin released into emergency custody after his arrest. Lainie spent hours, over the phone and face to face, speaking with Bridget and Dennis Vasquez and Sheriff Diaz, the county prosecutor and Judge Campbell’s secretary, social workers and case officers from the department of Child Protection Services. She pored over case law on the subject, filed document after document, plumbed the expertise of her more senior colleagues, even as they eyed her curiously, because it was no secret that she had been waved in the direction of the door and given the choice whether or not to walk through it. Matt dutifully acted as her sounding board and biggest supporter, discussing ideas and perusing research she didn’t have time to get through on her own.

It was Matt who made the suggestion, late one evening, after she had been to visit Justin at the juvenile detention centre and long after Clay had retired to his bedroom. His tone was casual as he handed her a mug and returned to his seat beside her on the sofa in the sunroom, stepping over a stack of paperwork and leaning forward to retrieve the text he had been reading from, the steam from his coffee fogging his glasses. 

“What if we just adopted him?”

Lainie blinked, her mug partway to her lips, and looked at him.

Matt was looking back at her, his expression calm and open.

“Really?” she asked, cautiously.

It was a simple and straightforward solution, to both the issue of having Justin released from juvenile detention and their fear of losing him to the custody of the state the moment it happened, and immediately after Matt suggested it, and the idea sunk in, she was committed. The tiny fissure of hesitation that cut beneath it wasn’t the product of any uncertainty that it was what she wanted. Rather, she worried that Justin would reject the idea. Every time she visited, he asked about his mother, and even though there was a tinge of reluctance in his tone, a dutiful manner to his queries, it was clear that, despite everything, he would have been elated if Lainie had been able to confirm contact with the other woman. 

As much as she wanted him to be part of their family, she couldn’t assume that he wanted the same. 

“I’m game if you are,” Matt said, closing the textbook he held over his hand, his fingers between the pages marking where he had left off. “If Clay’s on board, I say we put it to Justin and see what he thinks.”

Lainie nodded, her heart swelling warm in her chest.

“OK,” she said. 

~

_Simple_ and _straightforward_ had, in hindsight, not been accurate terms to describe adopting Justin.

Better options would have been - rewarding, humbling, fulfilling, exciting, gratifying, beautiful, worthwhile.

And _hard_. 

Harder than she had realised it could be. 

Sometimes, Lainie wondered if it would have been easier having another baby. Even despite that seventeen years and a tube-tie procedure had passed since she had given birth to Clay, she thought that she probably would have found it less challenging to return to changing dirty diapers, administering night feeds and caring for an infant. Despite almost two decades of experience parenting a son, she felt woefully unprepared and inadequate in her attempts to settle Justin into their home and their family.

“I don’t know what to do,” she lamented to Bridget over the phone, sitting at the kitchen table and peer-reviewing a submission for Dennis on her laptop, the terms of her resignation from the firm thankfully accepted effective immediately, allowing her to move on without delay and begin work that felt meaningful for the first time in years. She looked at her reflection in the back of the spoon she had been using to eat a pot of yoghurt. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, or how to fix it.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Bridget had offered from the other end of the line, the muffled sound of a hospital drama playing on the television in the background. “You’re not doing anything wrong. And talk to me. Let’s break it down.”

The phone calls became a weekly routine. 

“He’s a great eater. At dinner, he wolfs his food down, always clears his plate, loves everything we give him,” Lainie explained one evening, the phone pinned between her shoulder and ear while she cleaned the dishes. “But he never snacks. I mean, I’ve never seen him even open the refrigerator or a cupboard. He’s obviously hungry, but I guess he feels like he can’t just help himself?”

Bridget hummed on the other end of the line, the muted sound of traffic and voices on the periphery as she walked from her apartment to the Greek place on the corner to pick up dinner.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “Could be he’s used to food being a finite resource that needs to be preserved. There might be trauma there, if he’s been punished in the past for taking food, or had food withheld deliberately.” A bell jangled as she entered the little corner restaurant. “Or maybe he just isn’t used to the kind of stuff you guys eat. I’ve met plenty of kids who have never eaten meat that didn’t come from a fast food bag or a can.” Lainie listened as Bridget greeted the staff at the restaurant and paid for her order before returning her attention to the call. “I think I’d start with just asking him what he likes, and see how you go from there.”

It was as good a place to begin as any.

“I’m good with whatever,” Justin shrugged, smiling, when she posed the question over breakfast the next day. He was always the first one downstairs, Clay practically shuffling into the kitchen most mornings as if he was half-dead a few minutes before he was due to head to school, and Justin accepted her offer of toast politely, shaking his head when she asked if he would like anything else, and then expanded that question more generally.

“If there’s anything you want me to add to the grocery list, anything you like or don’t like, you can just let me know,” she said. “Clay and Matt have never been big eaters, but they both have things they like, snacks and comfort foods. If there’s anything like that, that I can get for you…?”

“I’m fine, really,” Justin insisted, good naturedly. “I’ll be happy with anything.”

Lainie felt frustrated, and then guilty for it. 

The following weekend, she pushed a cart around the grocery section of the Walplex while Matt and the boys met with the contractor who would be refitting the workshop as a bedroom and living space for Clay and Justin, retrieving the items she normally bought, reaching for them mechanically and by habit while she wracked her memory, trying to think of the foods she had seen Justin enjoy. Truthfully, he seemed to relish everything they put in front of him, eating with enthusiasm and always making sure to thank them before he left the table. It had taken some getting used to – Clay had become increasingly prone to simply getting up and leaving the room mid-meal, if he even ate anything at all – and after a couple of conversations with Matt and Bridget, she had come to realise that Justin’s manner was as much an expression of gratitude as it was a perhaps unconscious, learned mechanism designed to secure his next meal. 

As Lainie stood at the deli section while the boy behind the counter sliced, weighed and packaged the ham and provolone that she requested, she wondered how something as simple as a polite and sincere ‘thank you’ could mean so much, and leave her feeling so heartbroken.

She was desperate to help Justin feel secure. 

“Anything else I can get you?”

Lainie accepted the wrapped packages passed over the counter to her, placing them on top of the groceries in her cart, and looked back at the boy, his face familiar, but difficult to identify out of context. She guessed him to be around Clay and Justin’s age. Pinned to the black apron he wore over his pale green uniform shirt, his nametag said _Diego_.

“Is there anything you’d recommend?” she asked, on a whim, and he blinked at her, his expression registering surprise. Lainie supposed there probably weren’t too many shoppers in Evergreen interested in the opinion of a seventeen-year-old boy working behind the deli counter of a Walplex. She smiled, waving a hand toward the glass case. “If you wanted something comforting, what would you choose?”

The boy’s cheek dimpled with a hesitant smile, and sparked off an automatic identification in the back of her mind as she realised where she had seen him before. 

_Liberty Tigers._

_Number sixty-four._

_Torres._

“OK,” he nodded slowly, taking a moment to consider the display, before stepping to his left. “If it were me, I’d go with the _salchichón_.” He pointed to a cured sausage that looked to Lainie like salami, or perhaps chorizo. “My family is Dominican,” he said, his dark eyes warm as he explained. “We fry it for breakfast, with eggs, onions, cheese, avocado. My aunt makes it sometimes, on weekends, or special occasions. We also eat it with _mangú_ , but-“ he hesitated, lifting his shoulder in a shrug and offering, diplomatically. “It’s made with plantains. Not everyone likes it.”

Lainie smiled. She was quite certain she wouldn’t have been able to identify what they were, and had never eaten one in her life, but she knew she had heard Justin in the kitchen, observing Matt’s patented and fiercely protected recipe for making scrambled eggs, talking about breakfast burritos made with eggs, black beans and plantains. She couldn’t recall if he had mentioned when or where he had eaten them, but she remembered the grin that lit his face, as she watched him pass Matt a plastic pot of heavy cream. 

“Is it hard to make?” she asked, and Diego smiled slowly, surprised, but pleased.

“No,” he shook his head, his accent like spiced honey. “You could google it. It’s real easy. Two ingredients – plantains and oil or butter, whatever you normally cook with - boiled and mashed. Salt, if you like.” He shrugged simply. “That’s it.”

Justin might have thought her pancakes were _fucking amazing_ , but that was only because the recipe was her mothers, reliably foolproof and handed down through their family, and really, Matt was the cook in their household.

_Real easy_ sounded perfect.

At breakfast on Saturday morning, Clay paused as he took a seat at the table and scrubbed a hand sleepily over his face, narrowing his eyes in a puzzled frown aimed at the stove.

“Are you boiling unripe bananas?”

Justin, curious at his disgusted tone, peered over his shoulder, a slow smile cresting brilliantly across his face. Justin smiled a lot – was famous for it, or infamous, depending on who he used it on and for what purpose – but much of the time, they were deployed with such precise intent that Lainie wondered what was shadowed in the brightness of his grin. He had a whole repertoire, carefully curated and meticulously applied to fit the situation and what he meant to achieve, smirking cheekily and beaming reassuringly. And then there was that charming, dimpled smile – his trademark, versatile enough to span from placating to flirting and from teasing to apologising, but it was also his most honed deflective tool. It was impossible to tell what and how much he hid behind it.

When he smiled naturally, spontaneously, it was different – sweet and warm and innocent. 

“Nah, man. Those’re plantains.” He looked at Lainie, surprised, as Clay cast him a bewildered sideways glance, suspicious of his ability to identify the unfamiliar produce. “Where’d you get them?”

Lainie shrugged casually.

“Walplex, surprisingly.” She waved a hand at the items she had set out on the counter. “I got some flour tortillas, and black beans. I’m making _mangu_ , with fried eggs and salami.” She couldn’t help grinning, a little of the excitement she had been trying to contain bubbling out of her as she explained, “It’s Dominican,” and Clay and Matt exchanged a look, Clay cocking an eyebrow and Matt smiling ruefully as he returned his attention to his tablet, while she looked at Justin. “But I think it would work in a breakfast burrito as well.”

Justin, who had moved to the counter to inspect the tortillas and beans, nodded enthusiastically. 

“For sure,” he agreed, and for the first time since he had come to live with them, without thought or hesitation, he turned and opened the pantry, reaching to check the labels of the bottles on one shelf. “Do we have hot sauce?”

As Clay got up from the table to help him look, Lainie turned back to the stove to hide her smile.

~

That morning, Justin had shown her how to make the breakfast burritos that he had expressed his love for, and after that, had joined her or Matt from time to time in the kitchen, helping them cook and tasting or preparing ingredients he hadn’t tried before. The next win had been seeing his handwriting on the running grocery list she kept pinned to the door of the refrigerator – first, just things that he finished, orange juice or cereal, but later, tentatively, he started adding things that he needed, toiletries, mostly, and then, eventually – things that he wanted. Lainie had almost clapped her hands with triumph when she tore the week’s list free on her way out the door and saw that Justin had scrawled _Gatorade_ beneath Clay’s request for coffee beans. 

The most recent development had been Justin coming along to do the grocery shopping with her. It had been a long time since Clay or Matt had any interest in joining her, so aside from enjoying the company, Lainie had also learned that Justin’s favourite ice cream flavour was boysenberry – she would have guessed chocolate peanut butter – and that he was allergic to shellfish. 

“Progress!” Bridget enthused when Lainie updated her on the small victories they had scored since that day.

Their routine had evolved over the days and weeks as the weather warmed up – Lainie poured herself a glass of wine or made a strong coffee, and sat at the outdoor setting in the backyard, idly noting the progress the contractors were making on the outhouse as they chatted.

“I just wish that he could tell me things,” she lamented, rubbing the pad of her thumb around the rim of the oversized, eggshell blue, café-style mug, a Mother’s Day present from Clay the year before, that she hadn’t been certain whether to take as a thinly veiled comment on the fact that she still insisted on using the coffee mug he had made her in the third grade, the glaze chipping with age over the stick figure drawing he had decorated it with, depicting the three of them, her wrapped in the untidy spiral of a red and gold Trojans scarf. “If there’s something he’s afraid of, or concerned about, I want him to feel comfortable enough to say so.” She sipped her coffee. “And I feel like a tattle-tale, talking about him, and not _to_ him.”

Bridget clicked her tongue.

“C’mon, sis. You don’t ever feel bad asking for help parenting your kids.”

She said it, just like that. 

Your kids. 

“And, seriously, just tell him that,” Bridget suggested, plainly. “It’s not that he doesn’t trust _you_ , Lains. He doesn’t trust anyone. You gotta give him a reason to.”

It should have been a perfectly simple solution.

And yet, it was terrifying.

“What if he says something, and I’m not prepared?” she fretted, worrying the corner of her thumbnail between her teeth, a habit Matt would raise an eyebrow at, if he could see her. “What if I say the wrong thing?”

She fretted a lot, these days.

Clay had been exactly as neurotic and particular as an infant as he was as a teenager – he refused to cooperate with any of the sleep programs they meticulously researched and applied, he fed only when he wanted to, clamping his jaw closed no matter how long she spent trying to coax him, and absolutely refused to be settled until he was ready, simply ceasing to cry and scream suddenly and without prompting, as if to spite them for all of the hours she and Matt might have spent changing his diaper, offering feeds and Mr Poopers, checking his temperature, walking him in the stroller, driving him in endless loops of the block in his car seat, rocking and singing to him until their voices shook with rising despair. 

Even so, she had never felt as clueless then as she did, now.

Matt, ever the academic, spent his evenings researching advice and resources online. He listened to podcasts and tED talks, and chatted to his colleagues in the Psychology department at Sanderson, casting the net wide over information pertaining to parenting troubled teenagers, integrating non-biological children into families, supporting recovering addicts, recognising and responding to trauma – the list continued to grow, the more they got to know Justin. 

Lainie was not easily intimidated by bureaucracy – she had years of experience both navigating it and wielding it to her advantage representing clients in technical and complex civil and corporate disputes – but the various government departments involved in the keeping and releasing of Justin’s documented history, from his birth certificate to his health records, his school transcripts and so forth, operated far outside of the confines of common sense or even polite decency, for the most part. There was _a lot_ of paperwork involved in the adoption process, and that was fine – more than fine, she would do whatever it took – but it frustrated her endlessly that she had to jump through so many hoops, often the same hoop, in fact, several times over, in order to obtain something as simple as a vaccination record. 

And it wasn’t only the myriad rules and criteria that had to be met and forms that needed to be completed and filed. Amber had moved Justin around so frequently that his records existed in shattered fragments scattered across the state, and were hard enough to track down without even considering that half the time, Amber seemed to have misremembered his birthdate or misspelled, if not totally omitted, his middle name, when filling out forms and registering him for services. 

It was a small example of carelessness that Lainie realised, objectively, was a drop in the ocean, in the truest sense of the phrase, but it made her angry, anyway. 

Combining Dennis’s connections and Justin’s allocated social worker, and working with a few tips from Bridget, the easiest records to access had been those held by the California Department of Social Services.

When they arrived, Lainie had printed them at the office and taken them home to share with Matt, and as they had read through the notes, the sheaf of papers painfully thin considering the circumstances, she wept. 

\- Two forcible removals from Amber’s custody - before the age of eight.  
\- Seventeen months spent in foster care – four families and two group homes.  
\- Five reports to Child Protective Services, made over the span of a decade – one anonymous neighbour, one school faculty member, a concerned parent whose child attended the same home day-care service, a nurse at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland and, identified with a footnote and a phone number at the bottom of the last report, N. Walker. 

Four reports had been marked as investigated. Two of them were marked as closed. The others seemed to have simply been lost to lack of resources or adequate administration systems. The final report, as far as she could tell, had never progressed beyond lodgement. 

It made her feel sick and sad and furious. 

She wished that she could speak to Justin about it – to apologise on behalf of all of the adults and systems that had failed him, over and over again, for years, and so thoroughly that it was remarkable that he had survived, let alone retained any capacity for empathy or trust. 

But they weren’t quite at that point, yet.

“There’s no right answer to that, or to anything he might want to share with you, I’m afraid,” Bridget said, apologetically but firmly. “Just remember what’s in your heart, and try to answer with that in mind.” Her sister paused, exhaling distantly, and Lainie wondered if she had started smoking again, but didn’t ask when Bridget reminded her, “All you can do is your best.”

She hoped it would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that you enjoyed this update :) 
> 
> I wanted to drop in a little cameo for Diego, as the fic that I'm working on now will focus on developing the friendship between him and Monty that we didn't get to see in canon. 
> 
> Special thanks to comfortwriter28 for the beta checking, chats, encouragement, and generally being awesome. If you're not already, you should definitely check out his Justin & Monty fic [ Step Bros ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859872/chapters/62831203). 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you're keeping well <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lainie tries to encourage Justin to open up to her, without realising exactly what that means.

“Justin.” Lainie would never get used to the hesitation that registered in his expression, no matter how hard he tried to fight it back, no matter how gentle her tone, every time she spoke his name; as if being addressed, being acknowledged, could only lead to bad things. “I want you to know that you can tell me anything. Anything at all.” 

He met her gaze in a way that Clay hadn’t for as long as she could remember, its directness reminding her of the incredible distance between the way that Clay had come to conceptualise adults – as authority figures and, lately, a hindrance to be dodged and evaded wherever possible – and the way Justin had – a potential threat, to be treated with caution and pre-emptive defensiveness. When he looked at her, she felt as though she could see the mental assessments and calculations unspooling behind his eyes, determining the potential escape routes, verbal or physical, and building mental fortifications that it pained her to think he had ever felt were necessary. 

Lainie smiled gently. 

“You don’t ever need to feel scared, or ashamed, or silly. I won’t judge you, or be angry at you.” She raised an eyebrow, trying to catch his eye again when Justin’s gaze slid away from her face, his teeth sinking into the inside of his lower lip. “Anything you want to talk about, it will just be between you and me. And I promise I’ll always help you any way I can.”

She wanted to reach for his hand, to squeeze his fingers reassuringly, but she was still learning his instinctive reactions to touch, which could be unpredictable, and anyway, Clay’s standoffishness since he had hit puberty had forced her to wean herself off of the habit. Clay could be reliably expected to react to a squeeze of his hand about as well as a kick in the shin, with a grimace and a hasty retreat. After a moment, Justin spoke, but still didn’t look at her, his eyes on Clay’s sneakers, kicked off at the side of his bed, and his voice quiet and hesitant. 

“Even if it’s something bad?”

Lainie nodded, watching the way that he glanced at her, surreptitiously, from the corner of his eye.

“Even if it’s something bad,” she repeated, earnestly.

Although she felt horrible for it, her immediate thought was of Amber. It felt terribly judgemental, and although part of her believed that the other woman _should_ be judged for all of the devastating ways that she had failed as a parent, Lainie tried to resist the temptation. The last thing Justin needed – or that she wanted – was to replace his mother. Aside from being totally inappropriate, she didn’t want to give him the impression that his place in their home, in their family, and her affections, was conditional upon him choosing one or the other – that the price of admission was giving up Amber.

This, in spite of the fact that, as far as they could reasonably determine, she had given up on him. 

“Yeah. OK.” Justin shrugged, the corner of his mouth flickering upwards in a cautious smile. “Thanks.”

She smiled back at him.

“OK.”

Lainie hadn’t expected the floodgates to open and every thought that crossed his mind to be shared with her, fully and immediately, but she hadn’t really expected the method Justin chose to test the waters, either. 

She was standing in the kitchen, buttering toast, the first time.

“I cheated on my history quiz last Fall.”

Lainie wasn’t surprised to hear Justin’s voice behind her. He was still the first one down to breakfast in the morning, especially on Sundays, when she got up early to collect the newspaper from the front walkway – Matt might be happy to scroll through feeds on his tablet, but she still liked to browse through the local community publication – and made a cooked breakfast of bacon, eggs, French toast and, since Justin had been staying with them, pancakes. What was unexpected was his choice of greeting.

“OK,” she answered as she turned to look at him standing in the doorway in the sweatpants and t-shirt he had worn to sleep, her tone neutral. His expression was as unreadable as she had ever seen it, his thoughts and emotions normally projected from his eyes, even if he managed to control the rest of his features. She thought she detected hesitation, curiosity and, interestingly, just a hint of brashness, as if he were daring her to go back on her word, but he attempted to smother it beneath a mask of flat earnestness. Lainie smiled. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

The sliver of bravado she thought she saw in his gaze flickered and fled. Justin folded his arms across his chest, dropped his gaze, and shook his head.

It was a little disappointing, but it was a start.

“Well, thank you for telling me,” she told him, and tilted her head toward the stove. “You want to help me flip the pancakes?”

The second time, he was helping her to peg the laundry out on the line in the yard.

“I took twenty dollars from a lady’s handbag,” he said, unprompted, as he reached up to pin one of Clay’s sweaters to the line by the shoulders. Lainie looked at him around a damp pair of Matt’s jeans, although Justin didn’t return her gaze, his attention on the clothespin as he added, his voice as even as the calm surface of a lake, “In Oakland.”

The small, additional detail clarifying the location of the misdeed impacted deep inside her chest. 

It was a damn sight heavier than the history quiz admission, and for a panicked moment, Lainie had to wonder, at this rate of escalation, what might be on the horizon if he continued at this pace. 

It seemed she may have underestimated the scope of what she had offered, but Lainie was determined to follow through. What Justin chose to share with her didn’t have to be frightening. Just because Clay refused to talk to her, didn’t mean that he wasn’t doing things that would scare her if she knew. She didn’t want to be one of those people that Justin would come across for the rest of his life, who assumed things about him based on his upbringing, the hardships and traumas that had been outside of his control, and had, as far as she could piece together, been stacked upon the boy’s shoulders, one after the other, their weight uneven and crushing. It would be a disservice to Justin, and the wreckage he had dragged himself from, to flinch back from the ugly and bruising truth of the boy’s life before Clay had smuggled him into his bedroom. 

_This is what you wanted_ , she reminded herself. _Would you prefer lies and evasion? Because that’s all you’re getting from Clay_. She swallowed down her hesitation. _You made him a promise_.

Lainie was practiced at controlling her expression and tone, her poker face honed over years in the courtroom. She took a breath and watched him openly. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Without looking at her, Justin shook his head, tugging one of his Liberty Tigers t-shirts from the laundry basket and reaching to pin it up beside Clay’s sweater.

“OK,” Lainie said, tucking the pocket lining back inside Matt’s jeans. “Thank you for telling me.”

The pattern continued. 

In the car, on their way to an appointment with his social worker.

 _I snuck alcohol into the Winter Formal last year._ A pause, and a correction. _Well, I did that every year. I guess._

At the opening of a new bistro in town that Matt had wanted to try, sitting at a tall, narrow table on uncomfortable stools while Matt and Clay went to the bar to order their drinks, spoken beneath the too-loud music and chatter, his hands pinned between his knees and his shoulders rounded in one of the button-down shirts she had bought him. 

_I was twelve the first time I got high._

On the phone, tacked on to the end of a call to remind him that the spare key was underneath the second plant pot on the right side of the porch, and that there was twenty dollars by the phone for pizza when he got home from practice, when she had a late meeting scheduled at the office. 

_I stole Clay’s bike. And threatened to beat him up._

That one had seemed especially designed to invite punishment. 

Justin was not the first kid to have stolen from Clay, or threatened him with violence. Clay had a particular mix of unwavering convictions and abrasive stubbornness that had attracted those kinds of behaviours from other kids since he had started school. Over the years, it had both angered and worried her, and she had had several terse conversations with other parents, even one or two with an offending child directly, despite that Matt insisted that it was inappropriate. Lainie thought it was worth it, to see the colour rush from their face as they realised that their parents might not provide them with consequences, but she sure as hell would. 

She wondered at how Justin seemed to be capable of reaching back into her insecurities as a mother, the anxiety over her ability to protect her child from harm, and tug at it. 

Lainie was careful to keep her tone unmistakably measured when she asked if Justin wanted to talk about it. 

He didn’t. 

He never wanted to talk about any of them.

Lainie wondered how many secrets it would take, how many admissions, before he would trust her. It wasn’t lost on her that this was a test – that he was deliberately choosing to tell her only about things that _he_ had done, things that he expected to shock her, or frighten her, or worry her, the way that they never had his own mother. Things that a _bad kid_ would do, would be condemned and punished for. He never brought up things that had happened to him at the hand of another, or things that had just _happened_. He never shared abstract thoughts or blameless concepts. He was setting booby traps and trip lines, daring her to falter, watching for a flinch that would suggest hesitation. He was waiting for her to show him that she was like every other adult he had ever known.

Lainie held firm.

Underneath, she was terrified.

If these were the things that he chose to share to test the waters – to be sure that the path beneath his feet was firm and steady enough to bear his weight – she was afraid to think what he may be building up to, when he did decide that he wanted to talk. 

“I’ve had sex,” he announced, in the sunroom one evening when Clay was out and Matt had gone to the kitchen to make another bowl of popcorn. He was gazing down at his hands, where he sat on the floor with his back against the sofa, but he looked up at her to gauge her reaction, something desperate and frightened crouching, small and low, behind the casual expression he attempted to pull across it. “I’ve done, like, a lot.” He blinked, and glanced back down at his hands. “And not… not always with girls.”

It felt different, the admission devoid of the brashness or invitation that its predecessors had been laced with. This wasn’t an offering intended to bait her into reaction, to summon the outrage and punishment that he expected, but it was no less a test, like tossing a pebble into a dark hole and listening for the sound of it hitting the bottom to determine how deep it ran. 

Truthfully, sex was one topic that Lainie had been prepared for. 

She had been the one to talk to Clay about _the birds and the bees_ , as it were. It hadn’t been planned that way – they had always expected that Matt would do it, or perhaps both of them, their intent to give Clay as much information as he wanted and needed, but also minimise his embarrassment, which often resulted in walls slammed up so hard they could have besieged them for weeks without gaining an inch of ground. It had been simple bad luck – she hadn’t realised he had left the bathroom, and she had absentmindedly gone back to his room to add a sweatshirt she had accidentally placed in Matt’s pile to the laundry she had just left on the corner of his bed. She hadn’t seen anything, but the surprised, choked cry, the slap of his hand slamming his laptop screen closed, and the protective, humiliated hunch over his desk had made it obvious what she had walked in on.

It seemed like as good a time as any for _that_ conversation. 

Clay had been unsurprisingly and absolutely humiliated throughout, and just shook his head stubbornly when she had asked if he had any questions, avoiding eye contact as if meeting her gaze might cause him to actually sink through the floorboards with embarrassment. Although she had done her best, a small part of her had been mortified, too. And the idea of having that conversation again, with a boy she had known only a few months, had daunted her enough that she had given it careful consideration, walking herself through some hypothetical options to approach the topic so that she would feel prepared, if and when it was necessary. 

But this was different. 

It wasn’t the admission that not all of his experience had been heterosexual. The idea of teenagers engaging in sexual experimentation didn’t surprise her. Certainly, it shouldn’t – she had done exactly that in her freshman year of college before she met Matt, and still exchanged Christmas cards with the Irish international exchange student who had touched her more gently than anyone else in her life, before or since, the two daughters she was about to send off to college in Dublin smiling from the photographs she slipped inside each year, both blessed with their mother’s green eyes and ink-black curls. 

More than once, Lainie had wondered about Clay’s sexuality as he grew up. He was so unlike the boys that the other mothers at the office and on the PTA described - brash and volatile and thrumming with driving testosterone that seemed to rage more wildly than they could hope to control or contain - but eventually, she had decided that he was simply something of an old fashioned romantic, and perhaps a little easily intimidated by a pretty girl, like Sheri, who came by from time to time to work on school projects together, her cheek dimpling with a bright smile. 

It wasn’t all that surprising. Matt was his father, after all.

This was something else. 

She knew that Justin’s experience with sex was complicated, at the very least. She had coached him through his testimony preparation before he had taken the stand or spoken to the sheriff’s department about what he had witnessed in Jessica Davis’s bedroom the night of her party the summer of their junior year, and had asked him to be brutally honest with her which, to his credit, despite the deep flush that rose in his cheeks and the shameful rounding of his shoulders, his voice occasionally cracking or dropping to barely above a whisper, he did. 

And that was only what she knew about. 

That alone was more than a boy should have had to bear, and yet, Lainie didn’t get the impression that he meant to lead in to that. 

He needed her to say something – needed her reassurance, and acceptance, and help - and Lainie had no idea with what, or why. 

This was normally where their conversations ended. He admitted something, something that he thought was _bad_ , and that was as far as he was willing to go.

This time, it felt like there was something _else_ , queued up behind the admission, something he wanted to say but wouldn’t, or couldn’t. Something heavy enough that he wasn’t convinced the bridge she had offered would bear its weight. 

It was up to her to convince him. 

“As long as you’re respectful and safe, what you choose to do is up to you, honey,” Lainie said, watching his expression. “And anything you might have done in the past, that’s your business. If there’s anything you want to tell me, I want to hear it, but I don’t want to invade your privacy.”

Justin ducked his head, nodding.

“Yeah,” he said. “No, of course.”

It wasn’t what he had been looking for. 

She tried again.

“If you ever have any questions or concerns, and you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, you know you can always talk to Matt.”

“Yeah,” Justin said, turning back to the television. “I know.”

Again, she had missed the mark.

Lainie couldn’t help but feel like she had missed a cue, that this admission, more than any other, had _meant something_ , and she hadn’t listened closely enough or didn’t know the cyphers to translate the code he offered it in. 

She has no way of telling which part of her response had been a misstep, or in what way. 

Perhaps it had been misguided, to suggest that he approach Matt with issues that he may feel more comfortable discussing with another male. The new relationship growing between Justin and Matt was different to the fledgling connection between them. It was just as tentative and slow blooming, although sometimes, in bright bursts, Justin could be open and incandescent, as calm and happy and comfortable with them as if he had always been there, had always belonged. Most of the time, all Justin seemed to want from Matt was for him to mould himself into the shape of the hole in his life that no man had ever stepped up to fill, least of all his own father, whoever he was. In some ways, it wasn’t a difficult request to meet – the gap yawned open so clear and wide that Matt could comfortably step right into it without even ducking his head or watching his step. In other ways, it seemed like nothing he could have done would have ever been enough to completely fill a hole that even Justin himself didn’t seem to be able to determine the breadth or depth of. Sometimes, it seemed as if, despite himself, Justin didn’t want him to try. 

And maybe, when Justin had said ‘not always with girls’, he hadn’t meant – sometimes with boys.

It was a terrifying thought, and she hesitated to confront it head on, but she thought that not knowing, wondering, might be worse.

“Justi-“

“What’d I miss?”

Matt’s question – a joke framed with a lopsided grin, as he had paused the movie himself and taken the remote control with him to the kitchen, because the last time he had stepped away to refresh their bowl of popcorn and left them on a cliff-hanger while they waited, he had caught her and Justin sneakily skipping ahead without him – cut across her as she spoke. 

Justin laughed, reaching up to accept the bowl that Matt offered as he settled back into his seat on the sofa, and Lainie tucked the thought, dark and sharp-edged, into the back of her mind, resolving to try again later.

~

When he was a boy, Clay had liked to come along to the annual community fundraising fair to work on the cupcake stall with her. He wasn’t interested in the baking part – Lainie spent her evenings for weeks preparing dozens and dozens of cupcakes until the chest freezer in the garage was full to the brim with them – or even the customer service part, leaving her to smile and chat and box up each purchase, but he liked counting out the notes and coins and handing people their change, and tallying up their takings at the end of the day.

It had been a few years since being in the presence of one of his parents in public had been enough of a deterrent to keep him from volunteering to help, and anyway, he had arranged to see a film at the Crestmont with Tyler and Ani, the new girl in his robotics class – so Justin came along instead. 

On the drive over to the football field at Liberty, which would be lined with stalls and attractions for the event, the trunk and backseat of the Prius stacked with plastic crates of cupcakes and another three balanced in Justin’s lap in the passenger seat, he looked out the window at the quiet, pre-dawn streets.

“Those breakfast burritos,” he said, unprompted. “I learned to make them from Marisa.” He turned his head to look at her. “She was Bryce’s maid.”

Lainie got the distinct impression that this was meant as another admission – another truth shared, another offering of a piece of himself that he was ashamed of, or thought she would be – and it troubled her that, after a steady escalation, it seemed so inconsequential, at least, to her. She worried that her fumbled attempt to respond to what he had said in front of the television that night, now more than a week passed, had set them right back to square one.

“Well, she must be an amazing cook. They were delicious,” she answered, smiling as she cast him a sideways glance.

Justin shrugged his shoulders as she pulled into the parking lot behind the field, out of habit, easing the Prius into the same space she always parked in when she came to watch the Tigers play.

“Yeah,” he muttered, looking down at the lime and pistachio cupcakes with cream cheese frosting in his lap. “I guess I miss her.”

Lainie put the car into park, but left it running, the whisper of the hybrid engine and the soft murmur of the easy listening station Matt had tuned the radio to keeping any confronting silence at bay.

“You know it’s OK to feel that way, sweetheart?” she offered, and then, because she wasn’t certain that he was speaking about Marisa at all, or not _only_ her, she tipped her head as he slid a hesitant look in her direction. “You don’t ever have to feel ashamed.” He ducked his head, and Lainie took the opportunity to make another attempt at addressing what he had said to her in the sunroom, to make sure he understood, “Because I won’t ever feel that way about you. No matter how you feel, or what happened to you, or what you did. I promise.”

Justin’s clearwater blue eyes flicked to her, dark and sombre. She could read the conflict in the tight clench of his jaw, and see the thoughts that churned behind his guarded expression.

_Maybe you won’t. But you should._

He turned his head, looking out the windscreen as Todd Crimson approached, waving enthusiastically, a couple of other PTA volunteers in tow to help them unload the car.

“Yeah,” Justin said, deceptive light, his nod quick and compliant. “I get it. I think.” A flicker of a smile, not ingenuine, but a placating afterthought, designed to end the conversation, and quickly. “Thanks.”

A swing and a miss. 

Again.

Lainie turned off the engine and reminded herself that it was OK – this didn’t have to be resolved right now, it had taken years of neglect and pain and impossible choices for Justin to learn to be this way, it was not going to be resolved or healed in a single conversation. They could work through it, together, and if not with her, she would keep searching and trying until she found someone else, or some other way, something that would help him, somehow.

They had time.

The fair was blessed with a day of mild Spring weather, and the community turned out in generous numbers, enjoying the miniature carnival rides set up around the edge of the field – a carousel, a small ferris wheel, a child-sized rollercoaster – and the stalls, ranging from local businesses and stores donating their time and wares, commercial food truck vendors and sideshow games, to local community members selling everything from handmade arts and crafts, produce harvested from their own backyards, potted succulents, dog accessories and playmats for babies, to home brewed beer and spirits, honeys and chilli sauces, essential oils, soy-based candles and soaps fashioned to look like sugary baked goods. As trying as her gossiping could be, Lainie didn’t mind spending the morning in the stall beside Karen Dempsey. If nothing else, her traditional Chinese cooking was a crowd pleaser – the smell of her shrimp and pork dumplings drawing people from across the field, which certainly didn’t hurt their sales - and her _char siu bao_ was undeniably delicious, even if it came with a side of unsolicited commentary about the PTA president and her marriage. Lainie and Justin had indulged in a serving of the steamed pork buns for breakfast as the sun rose over the scoreboard at the end of the field. 

Justin was iridescent, their conversation in the car either forgotten, or at least tucked away somewhere hidden, his smile bright and genuine as he chatted with students and parents and teachers, beaming when an elderly woman Lainie didn’t recognise approached their stand, purchased a box of four raspberry and white chocolate chip cupcakes, and slipped him a couple of boiled candies from her pocket when she paid. It was certainly different to working with Clay, Justin gleefully deploying every skill in social manipulation in his repertoire to boost their sales, from unabashed flirting to laughing enthusiastically at jokes to his personal WMD – the puppy dog eyes. 

It was intoxicating, watching and listening to him be that way, light and engaged, and so the sudden lull into quiet drew Lainie’s attention as she crouched to stack the empty crates beneath the stall. Justin was looking across the fairway, toward the coffee van parked strategically at the midway point and under the watchful eye of Coach Morris, who had insisted on supervising every vehicle brought onto the field, making certain that the tyres didn’t damage the pitch. She straightened to follow his line of sight, and spotted them immediately.

Bryce Walker and his mother, Bryce wearing a royal purple Hillcrest varsity jacket and Nora dressed impeccably as always, even her casualwear tasteful and expensive, her pea coat and leather riding boots probably worth about as much as the Prius. Bryce reached up to the counter of the coffee van, accepting the two cardboard cups that the woman working the register offered, and moved to hand one to his mother. Justin stood still at Lainie’s side as Bryce seemed to notice him on his periphery, and turned a look in his direction. It was difficult to read, not only due to the distance or the fact that she didn’t trust one god damn emotion that boy attempted to convey, his expression a complex combination of smug triumph, disappointment, and longing. 

In the small space between them, Lainie gently touched Justin’s wrist.

Blinking, he looked at her, the expression he tried to shove back pained and sad and desperate, and in the space of a half-second, swept aside by a bright smile as he looked over her shoulder.

“Hey!”

Lainie turned to see Sheri lingering at the other side of their stand, her long dark hair falling about her shoulders and a warm smile dimpling her cheeks as she dug her hands into the pockets of her jacket. 

“Hi, Mrs Jensen.”

Sheri smiled brightly despite that Lainie felt a little awkward, and worried that her hesitation registered in her expression. The last time they had spoken, she had asked Sheri how to interpret a sudden ceasefire in a constant exchange of text messages between a boy and girl, and later, had regretted it. She couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have used the information herself, if she had been in Sonya’s position, but she liked to think that she may not have been quite so vicious about it, especially having gotten to know Zach, who came by the house to play video games and pick up Justin for football practice. 

“Hi, Sheri,” she said, cautiously polite. “Are you and your dad all packed?”

Lainie had heard around town, and had been filled in on the details by Karen, of course. Two days before Hannah Baker’s memorial, Sheri’s father had received news that his sister had been given an advanced liver cancer diagnosis. She lived alone, and had no children or nearby relatives to care for her. He and Sheri had flown out to Florida, where she lived, the next day to bring her home from the hospital, and had returned to Evergreen only for a couple of weeks, to pack up their things and put the house up for rent. 

Lainie could understand the drive to uproot an entire life and home to care for a family member who may not have much time left. If she could have, if there had been some way of knowing, she would have done the same for her father.

“All done. The truck left this morning,” Sheri nodded, then slid a glance in Justin’s direction. “Is it OK if I borrow Justin for a little while?” she asked. “My dad and I leave first thing tomorrow, and Justin promised me a ride on the ferris wheel before I have to go.”

Justin’s cheeks pinkened, just a little, when Lainie glanced at him, and he shrugged.

“Of course,” Lainie agreed with a smile. “Go ahead. Have fun.”

With a grin, Justin skirted around the edge of the stand and Lainie watched them chat as they walked shoulder to shoulder in the direction of the carnival rides, their fingers slipping together casually between them. 

When she turned back to the stall, Nora Walker was standing there, holding a pre-packaged plastic container of four orange and poppy-seed cupcakes in one hand, and her coffee in the other. 

Bryce, thankfully, was on the other side of the fairway, chatting to another stall-holder about the home brewed gin he was selling. Lainie wasn’t certain she could have kept her fingers from forming instinctive claws and swinging at his eye sockets, if he came within arms’ reach. 

Wordlessly, her expression unreadable and her eyes shadowed behind oversized designer sunglasses, Nora offered a twenty-dollar bill. Silently, Lainie accepted it, and turned to the money-tin to count out her change. 

“I’m probably the last person you would ever want to hear it from,” Nora said, her expression reserved but something warm and soft entwining her polite tone. “But I respect and admire what you and your husband are doing for Justin.” She set the coffee down on the edge of the stall counter to accept the change that Lainie offered, tucking it into the pocket of her coat. “He deserves a safe and loving home.”

Lainie thought that she heard regret in the other woman’s voice, but couldn’t be sure.

She thought of the CPS report in Justin’s records – the last one ever made, concerns raised over an untreated concussion and suspected broken ribs, falling through the cracks before it was even allocated to a case worker for investigation, and the note at the bottom, an offer to provide any more information or assistance that was required, a contact phone number, and a name – N. Walker. 

“I appreciate that,” Lainie said, cautiously, aware of Karen’s not especially subtle attention from the stall to their right. 

For a moment, it seemed as if Nora might say something more, or at least wanted to, but it passed, silently, and with a polite nod, she retrieved her coffee, and left. 

~

Lainie wasn’t certain if it was the residual animosity that had existed between them since their paths had first crossed, or if they were simply settling into the natural pattern of being brothers, but sometimes, Clay and Justin fought.

In almost every way, Justin was different to Clay. Somehow, despite that he was less secretive, he was no less difficult to read. In fact, he was sometimes far better at Clay than hiding what he was thinking or feeling, Clay’s refusal to share always accompanied by an unmistakable air of defiance, bulky and yet insufficient to obscure what was boiling underneath – anger, sorrow, anxiety, shades and combinations of all three. With Justin, the emotions were right there on the surface, but they were so unusually mixed and matched that Lainie found herself floundering to respond the way he needed her to. Joy was often partnered with guilt. Happiness tempered by hesitation. Fury marched in lockstep with fear. 

They didn’t fight often – Clay was quicker to anger and more inclined to take a kill-shot, sometimes with so little regard that she wondered what on earth he was thinking, while Justin was often more careful, seeming reluctant to view the other boy as an opponent, despite that, to his own disgust, Clay was often powerless to shield his weak spots, involuntarily highlighting them and leaving them open to attack. That wasn’t to say Justin was a push over. He was quick to apologise, and both hesitant and bashful afterwards, but in the right – or perhaps, wrong – circumstances, he could erupt suddenly and unreservedly, laying waste to everything around him in a flash of uncontrolled emotion.

“C’mon, man, let’s watch something else. This shit is for kids.”

There was an edge to Justin’s voice that Lainie wasn’t yet familiar with, sharp and rough, like a cornered animal growling in warning, and it drew her attention from the kitchen, where she sat at the table with a bowl of muesli and the newspaper, to the living room, where Justin had taken his heaped helping of sugary cereal to sit in front of the television with Clay.

“Have you even seen it?” Clay demanded, incredulous, cocking an eyebrow as he looked up at Justin from his seat on the sofa, a bowl of cornflakes in one hand and the television remote in the other. “It’s not for kids,” he insisted as he shook his shook his head. “Besides, this is an awesome episode-“

Clay waved his spoon at the television, where a cartoon was playing, some kind of insectoid aliens – one black with a blue scarab beetle on its back, the other huge and coloured in shades of grey – facing off in what looked to Lainie like maybe a space ship, or some kind of underwater base. It had been a long time since she had sat on the sofa with Clay and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, when he was small and the storylines of cartoons were light and child-appropriate. 

Justin barely glanced at the television, his expression tense as he attempted to reach for the remote, grimacing when Clay leaned away from him, and their voices began overlapping one another, Clay continuing to lay out his argument even as Justin’s tone grew brittle and thin.

“Dude, please-“

“-they finally reveal who the villains are-“

“Clay-“

Justin reached again for the remote. Clay held it out of his reach. 

“-and then the whole team comes together-“

“I don’t fucking care-“

Justin’s jaw clenched, his grip on the edge of his bowl tight. 

“-and it’s the first time Black Beetle and Blue Beetle fight-“

“ _I said I don’t fucking care!_ ”

Justin’s voice cracked and, whiplash-quick, his hand shot out and swatted Clay’s bowl from his grasp, sending milk and cornflakes in a messy, soaring arc, the bowl and spoon clattering across the coffee table the moment that, tablet tucked under one arm and still dressed in his pyjamas, Matt appeared at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Hey!”

Justin flinched, the colour fleeing his face in an instant, and suddenly, everything was very still. Matt, frowning and bewildered, stood at the foot of the staircase. Clay, stunned, stared up at Justin as milk and soggy cereal soaked into the rug at his feet. Mechanically, face pale, Justin set his own untouched bowl of cereal on the coffee table. Behind him, on the television screen, the blue and black alien boy staggered against a wall, and a disembodied voice spoke to him.

_Jaime Reyes, you do not function at full capacity. Suggested tactic: grant me total control of armour and all weaponry._

Lainie was halfway out of her chair when Justin darted for the front door. 

“Justin-“ she called after him, but was cut off by the firm click of the door closing behind him. Through the sunroom window, she could see him stride, quickly and unsteadily, down the porch steps and along the path, bare foot and dressed in the t-shirt and sweatpants he had slept in. By the time she made it out the door, down the steps and to the gate, where the path terminated at the sidewalk, looking left and right along the street, then both ways, again, to be certain; Lainie couldn’t see him anywhere. 

Heart clattering an uneven, high-tempo jazz beat in her chest, Lainie hurried back inside and retrieved her phone from on top of the pile of briefs she had been planning to start reading after breakfast, left on the dining table.

From the living room, Matt raised a questioning eyebrow at her, and she just shook her head. Calmly, he reached to retrieve the upturned bowl from the coffee table, turning it right side up and looking at Clay as he reached for the haphazardly flung spoon.

“You OK, kiddo?”

Clay blinked, frowning at the television, where the two insect aliens morphed biological weaponry and battered one another relentlessly. 

“Yeah, I just-“ He peered at Matt, his brow furrowed in confusion and concern. “What the hell? It’s just a cartoon.”

Lainie could hear the low, even rumble of Matt responding as she scrolled quickly through her contact list to Bridget’s number, and dialled. Biting the corner of her thumbnail anxiously, she stepped into the kitchen. 

“Hey, sis,” Bridget sing-songed, enthusiastic despite that her voice was thick with sleep and Lainie realised, detachedly, with no husband or kids to interrupt or demand breakfast on a Saturday morning, she had probably been sleeping in. “How’s mom life treating ya?”

“Didge, I-“

Lainie looked out through the kitchen window and blinked, surprised, the statement drying up in her throat.

“Lains?” Bridget said. “You still there?”

“I-“ she shook her head, attempting to corral her scattered thoughts. “Yes. Sorry. Can I call you back?” 

Bridget, apparently unperturbed, responded with a short laugh.

“Whenever you’re ready, sis.”

She had already disconnected the call by the time Lainie lowered her phone from her ear.

While Matt and Clay mopped up the milk and cereal in the living room, Clay grumbling half-heartedly about having to clean up a mess he wasn’t responsible for making, Lainie went to the back door and, closing it gently behind her, headed down the stairs. Her slippers were quiet on the paving stones, but Justin was so tightly wound, he probably would have sensed her even if she hadn’t made a single sound, his shoulders a tense line beneath his t-shirt where he sat on the edge of one of the outdoor chairs. 

Calmly, Lainie sat opposite him, the low table between them littered with leaves from the trees and shrubs that lined the alfresco area. Justin stared steadfastly at the mess of leaf litter, the colourless flush replaced with spots of red high on his cheeks, angry and humiliated and frightened.

“Are you OK?” Lainie asked, gently.

Jerkily, Justin nodded.

His hands were clenched into fists where they rested on his knees. 

“Would you like to talk about it?”

His jaw tightened, and he shook his head. The heel of one bare foot bounced, agitated, and Lainie got the distinct impression that he was waiting for something. 

“Justin, love,” she said, and he flinched, as if bracing for a blow. “It’s OK if you don’t want to talk, or if you’re not ready to come back inside just yet. But-“ As soon as the word passed her lips, his gaze flicked to her, defiant and injured, all at once. He had been waiting for the ‘but’, and seemed to both dare her to continue, and beg her to stop. “I need you to know that there’s nothing you could do that would jeopardise your place in this family.”

Justin scoffed, a harsh sound in the back of his throat. 

“That’s fucking stupid,” he muttered, aiming for scorn, but unable to quite press down the terrified tremble in his voice. “You don’t even know me. Like, at all.”

Lainie nodded, acknowledging the frustration and contempt he offered, and the terror and shame he attempted to hide behind it. 

“I know you enough to want you here, with us.”

Justin shook his head, looking down at his fists, resting white-knuckled and unsteady on his knees, his response disjointed and offered sharply, like biting off chips of ice.

“I stole a car in junior year.”

Another admission, another dare, another test. 

“I took it from the navy pier. It had the keys in it, so it was easy. We took it joyriding, this old, big-ass fucking Bronco. Got chased by the cops.” He looked at her, his jaw set hard and defiant. “Then I crashed it into a tree and just fucking ran.”

More than she had been by anything else he had admitted before, Lainie was struck.

Because she already knew this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting!
> 
> If you've read [ Joyride ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20942399/chapters/49790162), then you know the story Justin is referring to, as well :) 
> 
> If Justin's reaction to Clay's chosen morning viewing (which, btw, is [ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOrniOl3j9w) episode of Young Justice) doesn't make sense, it's a reference to [ this ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21826369/chapters/60214924) chapter of Dizzy. 
> 
> Thank you very much to comfortwriter28 for the beta checking, the convos, the support and encouragement. If you're not already reading it, I very much recommend you check out his current fic, [ Step Bros ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859872/chapters/62831203) and show it some love :)
> 
> There is one more part to go to finish off this fic, which is currently in review. Seeing as this fic is intended to follow the parent chapter format of Dizzy, and we've already had an (intentionally brief) cameo from Bryce, it's probably no surprise that my favourite problematic trash boi, Monty, and Chloe will be making an appearance before the end. 
> 
> I'm 3/4 of the way finished with the first draft of the next fic about Monty and Diego's friendship, so will hopefully not have too much of a gap in between.
> 
> Happy Halloween!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lainie crosses paths with other people in Justin's life, and makes the connection she has been fighting for.

Lainie was running late for an appointment with the Sheriff to exchange paperwork relating to a civil suit brought against employees of the local town council relating to potential cases of fraud and embezzlement, when she ran – bodily, accidentally, her eyes down on her phone, reading a text from Clay, marinated in sarcasm, about all of the _fun_ he was having spending the summer with Matt’s parents – into a fledgling lawyer who had interned with the firm a few years earlier. 

“Naomi,” she said, startled, placing a steadying hand on the other woman’s elbow. “I’m so sorry. Hi. How are you?”

Lainie smiled politely through the query, because it seemed obvious that the answer to that question was – frazzled. 

The younger woman looked as though she might have taken to sleeping underneath her desk or perhaps in the back seat of her car between appointments to keep up with her workload, or perhaps just with her lifestyle which, if it was anything like the way she was living when she had been an intern, involved pinballing from one disaster to the next, her relationships always brimming with drama, her family straight out of an episode of a daytime talk show where the audience members might be expected to brawl with the guests, and her tendency to overshare every thought without filter the reason why she had not been offered employment at the firm when the period of her internship had ended. 

Perhaps to the detriment of the greater community, she had eventually settled into a public defender position, representing offenders who could not afford to appoint their own legal counsel. 

Flustered, Naomi flicked a loose lock of hair out of her face.

“Oh, you know. Run off my damn feet,” she said, raising a shoulder beneath her jacket, buttoned over a dress that she _may_ have worn on a Tinder date the night before. “I’ve got that many juveniles on my desk at the moment. I barely even have time to read the case files before they call me down here.” She waved the messy clutch of documents in her hand, almost losing one or two with the flippant action. “Joyriding and grand theft auto. Stole some poor guy’s Bronco while he was fishing down at the navy pier. A bunch of previous offenses, of course, because they never like to make it easy!” She snorted a sarcastic laugh. “And a minority, just in case I pull Judge Jacobson and he’s feeling particularly _aryan_ that day.”

Lainie glanced around the open-plan space, Naomi’s natural speaking volume strident enough to be easily overheard by the deputies, administrators, and various other people in the building. No one appeared to be paying them any particular attention, but Lainie was reluctant to be associated with the other woman’s loudly expressed opinions. She peered past Naomi’s shoulder, disappointed to see Sheriff Diaz’s office door closed. Standing at the internal office window, the Sheriff raised his hand in a polite wave past the person sitting on the other side of his desk, then tapped at his watch, mouthing _fifteen minutes_.

Lainie took a slow breath, and plastered a smile on her face. 

“I considered public defending when I graduated,” she said. “It must be very rewarding.”

Naomi rolled her eyes, huffing a laugh. 

“Not really. Most of the time, I don’t even know why I bother.” She leaned closer, her tone conspiratorial, as to share a secret, but did not lower the volume of her voice at all. “I swear, most of these kids, it’s like a game of bingo to them. How many misdemeanours can I tick off my score card before I get sent to the big house?” She shook her head. “I guess what can you expect, most of the time, if their parents are in the drunk tank every weekend or locked up themselves? What the hell else are their kids gonna do with their lives?” She paused as her phone began to ring, an obnoxiously loud and jangly tune, almost dropping the paperwork grasped untidily in her hand as she struggled to tug it free of her jacket pocket. “We’re not talking brain surgeon or rocket scientist material, here.”

Lainie clenched her jaw.

_Jesus._

“Oh, I have to take this.” Naomi announced, shoving the stack of papers beneath her arm, calling over her shoulder as she tottered away. “ _So_ good to see you!”

Lainie realised that after just a few moments of interacting with the other woman, she felt frayed, as if her thoughts had been rattled loose just from being in the proximity of her chaos. With fifteen non-chargeable minutes to wait for the Sheriff, she figured she may as well put the time to use and make a head start on the emails she was going to have to spend her evening reviewing to prepare for her first meeting the following morning. 

Glancing around for a quiet place to wait, Lainie turned toward the hallway at her back, and the bench outside of the interrogation rooms, empty except for one boy, dressed in a Liberty Tigers tee, cropped sweatpants, and unlaced sneakers, sitting at the far end. He kept his gaze fixed steadfastly forward beneath the brim of his baseball cap, but even in profile, she recognised him. He had played the last game that she and her father had attended together and, watching him refuse to return her gaze, she could hear the joyful bark of her father’s laughter.

_Jesus, that safety is a vicious little S.O.B, isn’t he? Lucky he’s on our side, huh?_

Habitually, her mind reeled off the facts. 

_Liberty Tigers._

_Number thirty-two._

_de la Cruz._

Lainie took a seat at the opposite end of the bench and, when she felt the boy bristle defensively as she lifted her leather satchel into her lap, despite the half-dozen feet between them, she glanced in his direction. The first thing she noticed was the handprint bruise wrapped around his forearm in rotten shades of blackberry. Then, the blue watercolour stain slashed with a fresh red gash at his template. And then, biting the inside of her lip, Naomi’s voice echoing in her thoughts, she saw the metal bracelet of the handcuffs securing the boy by one wrist to the solid wood armrest of the bench. 

Lainie looked down at her satchel, thought of the text messages from Clay and, speaking softly, turned to address the boy. 

“Number thirty-two, right?” 

The boy cast her a guarded, sidelong look, nothing in his expression shifting or suggesting that he understood the reference, his jaw locked hard against any confirmation either way. There was a tightness in his expression, as if he was trying desperately to clamp down on something he didn’t want her to see, shoving it back behind a flat, edgeless mask of anger. Silent, he turned his gaze away. Lainie glanced out into the open space of the station, noting that the nearest deputies seemed occupied with telephone calls and conversations, while Naomi spoke loudly on her phone in the reception area. She settled back into her seat on the bench, her eyes forward, as she addressed the boy.

“Did anyone see you take the car?”

He didn’t look at her, his eyes locked on the linoleum at his feet, but after a moment, almost imperceptibly on her periphery, he shook his head. 

“Were you driving?”

Another small, defiant, jerk of his head. _No._

Well, OK, then.

“They’ll be hard pressed to make out a case for the theft,” she told him, her tone conversational, her gaze shifting casually, the way she might if she were taking a call using earbuds. “If it were me, I’d make a deal for a misdemeanour charge of unlawful taking of a vehicle.” Lainie felt the boy’s profile shift at her side, his shoulders relaxing minutely. “You might get probation. A bit of community service, if they want to make an example.”

Maybe he was all the things Naomi had said – a hopeless kid from hopeless parents who would never amount to anything, because his trajectory was already set and locked. But Lainie didn’t think so and, even though she didn’t know for sure, or know the boy at all, she didn’t want _him_ to think so, either. 

She glanced along the length of the bench at him and, with an air of reluctance, he looked back at her. Her father had been right, there was something raw and vicious about him, in the sharp line of his jaw and the unyielding, sharklike darkness of his eyes, and yet, with his cheeks tinted slightly pink beneath the smattering of freckles across his nose, all Lainie could think was that he looked _young_.

He didn’t offer any thanks. He didn’t smile, or speak to her at all.

She found out a few weeks later, in response to a casually curious query tacked onto the end of a conversation with a friendly contact at the Sheriff’s department, that he got off on a deferred probationary sentence with community service. 

Sitting at her desk after ending the call, Lainie smiled.

~

“Did you ever get caught?”

Justin looked up at her curious tone, a fissure splitting the façade of defiance that he had fortified himself with, the fists curled on his knees loosening as he shook his head.

“No,” he muttered, almost sullenly, as if he wished he had been. He lowered his eyes. “I swerved to miss a cat,” He said, barely above a murmur. “That’s how I hit the tree.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation that had unfolded in the living room, and the circumstances that he described, Lainie felt a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. It was endearingly unsurprising, the idea that Justin had swerved mid-joyride, mid-police chase, to avoid injuring a cat. 

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, a habit now, every time he offered up a little shard of himself, like tiny pieces of something fragile and broken, for her to put back together. 

Justin nodded, casting a brief look over his shoulder at the house. Lainie raised her eyebrows earnestly. 

“Do you want to come back inside?”

“Yes,” he answered, quickly but hesitantly, glancing up at her, then away, embarrassed. “I just… I just need a minute.”

She smiled and nodded, standing.

“Take your time, sweetheart.”

~

Lainie saw the boy – number thirty-two – one more time, that summer.

The week that classes returned at the end of the season, she received a call on her work phone from an unknown number, early in the morning, as she was standing at the top of the stairs, debating the pros and cons of knocking on Clay’s door to make sure he was awake before she headed out for a run. Office hours wouldn’t commence for some time yet, but the firm expected her to take advantage of every available opportunity to book chargeable time and, she reasoned, perhaps talking loudly on the landing would be enough to rouse Clay without having to knock. 

The woman on the other end of the line apologised for calling so early and introduced herself as Louise Preston. She explained that she had been referred to call Lainie by a colleague. She was divorcing her husband, and was seeking representation to protect herself and her interests - specifically, the daughter that they shared. 

“It’s just-“ the woman paused, her voice heavy with guilt. “This is my second divorce. And I wish I had done better… at a lot of things, I suppose.” She sighed. “But mostly, I wish I hadn’t run out of time and money and strength to fight for more, the first time around. For my daughter’s sake.”

The raw emotion in the voice of the other woman – other mother – pierced Lainie.

“I’m afraid that’s really not my area of expertise,” Lainie clarified, apologetically. “I don’t normally practice in family law, but I can highly recommend Chris Mason over at Friedman, Marks and Ling. He’s a very experienced lawyer who has an extremely good success rate and knows exactly how to navigate these kinds of matters.”

The woman hesitated, and somewhere behind her, Lainie thought she could hear the high-pitched giggle of a Spongebob Squarepants episode. 

“Thank you,” Louise said, politely. “But I already spoke to them and Mr Mason is… a little bit out of my price range.” There was a pause, and a tiny, exhausted tremor in her voice as she insisted, “Thank you, though. I appreciate your time.” 

Lainie glanced at Clay’s bedroom door – still closed, with no sign of consciousness or movement on the other side – and thought of early mornings when he was small and she had been a junior lawyer, sitting beside him on the sofa while he watched early morning cartoons before she dropped him off to day-care on the way to the office, trying to follow the storyline just enough to answer his curious questions, her laptop balanced on her knees as she attempted to answer emails about the practical application of obscure pieces of commercial legislation at the same time.

“Actually-“ she said, quickly, cutting across Louise as she began to say goodbye. “If you wanted to, we could chat through it. Off the record. Maybe give you an idea of what level of representation you’ll need, and help you find someone who will give you value for money.”

That evening, she headed straight from the office to the address that Louise had texted to her, parking the Prius against the curb beneath a towering old tree in the front yard, the garden bed circling its base planted cheerfully with colourful little blooms. As she climbed from the car, careful to make sure she armed the alarm as a woman in the house across the street watched her from the front window, an SUV pulled into the driveway, and a petite blonde woman, roughly her age, stumbled out, a handbag hanging from one shoulder and a laptop bag slung over the other, a stack of files tucked against her side and a mobile phone pinned between her shoulder and ear. With her one spare hand, she offered an apologetic wave, and nodded for Lainie to follow her inside.

“No, I’m still here, Mr Massey,” she said, bright and polite, into the phone as she opened the front door. “I’m just about to set my laptop down and get that work order number for you. I know Natalie definitely called that plumber this morning.”

Lainie followed Louise inside, and smiled reassuringly, shaking her head when the other woman mouthed an apology at her. Louise indicated toward the kitchen, where she could wait, then slipped toward the back of the house to finish up the phone call. Lainie glanced around the living room, small but cosy and lived in, photographs of two smiling girls – one blonde and around Clay’s age, the other dark-haired and perhaps ten years younger – displayed on the television cabinet. Although no one was in the room, the television was on, playing a reality show Lainie didn’t recognise, and there was a spread of debris normally shed by children, backpacks and shoes dumped on the carpet and a blue Liberty Tigers varsity jacket slung over the back of the sofa. Voices spilled from the doorway Louise had indicated to.

“Wait, one more – what about this one?” – the bubbly excitement of a young girl.

A rap song with a thudding bassline and a female artist rapping with a clipped Puerto Rican accent poured from the kitchen. 

“Amelia. You said you needed help with your Spanish homework.“ – an older girl, her tone tinged with warning, which went entirely unheeded as Lainie moved toward the doorway. 

“What’s that word?”

“Kitana?” – a boy, this time, who chuckled sarcastically. “She says it like forty times. It’s the name of the song. Clean your ears out.”

The little girl groaned, laughing, and the boy relented. 

“ _Mañana_? Morning. Or I guess, tomorrow, the way she’s using it.” His tone turned lightly teasing. “Chloe’s right. You really do need to study, squirt.”

Lainie stepped into the doorway, finding a kitchen just as compact as the living space, and just as tidily arranged and warmly lived-in, a small table at its centre, and a refrigerator in one corner decorated brightly with drawings, photographs and strings of colourfully dressed paper dolls, pinned to its surface with magnets in the shape of fruits and animals. 

At the table, three kids were sitting – the two girls from the photographs, the older wearing a pretty floral dress with honeyed curls about her shoulders, the younger with long, dark hair to her scabbed elbows, and the boy, number thirty-two, in a blue and black plaid shirt. 

The table was a disorganised spread of text books, notepads, loose paper, colourful markers, scissors and pens. A mobile phone, between the younger girl and the boy, played the unapologetically explicit rap song. The only one who appeared to be doing any homework was the blonde girl, a calculator at her right hand, while the other two wielded scissors and markers, the boy cutting a folded sheet of paper with a pair of scissors, while the girl shrugged her shoulders, her eyes cast down at the green marker in her hand.

“I don’t care. Senora Braga is a _pinche la perra_.”

The blonde girl’s head snapped up, her accusatory gaze immediately pinning the boy, despite that he hadn’t been the one to speak.

“Did you teach her that?”

A small smile, hovering between amused and sheepish, tugged at the corner of his mouth, but before he answered, the boy spotted Lainie in the doorway, and immediately, his expression slackened with surprise and recognition. Turning her head to follow his line of sight, the blonde girl blanched, surprised, and leaned over to stab at the phone by the younger girl’s elbow with one finger, silencing the throbbing beat of the rap song. 

“I’m so sorry about that.” Louise hurried from the back of the house, her heels kicked off and her toenails painted pink beneath her nude tights, the same shade she wore on her fingernails. She extended her left hand, the other clutching a laptop and purse against her chest. “I’m Louise.”

“Lainie Jensen,” Lainie said, shaking the other woman’s hand. “And it’s really no problem. I’m a working mom, too.”

Louise smiled appreciatively, although it fled quickly when she turned to the kitchen. 

“Oh, my goodness,” Louise sighed, shaking her head at the chaos spread over the table top. “Kids, I need this space, please.” While they began to pack away without protest, standing to stack books and papers, Louise moved around the kitchen in a flurry of activity, setting down her laptop on the counter, switching on an electric kettle, and turning to the blonde girl. “I’ve called Pho Ha and ordered some dinner,” she said, plucking a few bills from her purse and handing them to her. “Could you please take your sister and go pick it up?”

The girl accepted the bills, but shook her head, her expression serious.

“I want to be here, for this,” she said, glancing sidelong at Lainie, before returning her gaze to her mother. “For you.”

Wordlessly, she handed the bills to the boy, and he glanced between her and Louise, hesitating to take them. It seemed as if Louise might say something, her lips parted around a protest, but after a moment, she shook her head in agreement, turning to retrieve a box of teabags from the cupboard, while the blonde girl reached to pluck three pale pink mugs from an overhead shelf.

“C’mon, squirt,” the boy said, nudging the younger girl, who stared at Lainie openly, with his elbow as he tucked the money into the pocket of his jeans. The girl grinned at him, reaching up with one hand, and he took it in his, swivelling and ducking at the knees to use the hold to lever her up onto his back, where she clung with her knees at his hips, giggling. 

When he cast a glance at her as they passed her in the kitchen doorway, Lainie smiled, and he didn’t return it, exactly, but there was a soft edge to his expression that hadn’t been there, the day they had met at the sheriff’s station.

“Sorry, I swear every time I come home, the amount of kids in the house has multiplied,” Louise apologised with a tired laugh, pushing a stack of text books, topped with loose paper, a handful of markers, and a string of half-finished paper dolls, drawn with fangs and bold, bawdy makeup, to the far side of the table to make space. “Do you like Vietnamese food? I didn’t even think to ask-“

“Vietnamese sounds lovely,” Lainie insisted, taking a seat where Louise indicated, and leaned down to unpack her laptop, while the blonde girl made them tea. “And really, no need to apologise.” She shrugged as the other woman sat down opposite her, her expression tired but hopeful, as her daughter brought three steaming mugs of tea to the table. “I have just the one son, and sometimes, I swear he can get into as much trouble as at least two.”

~

There were parts of adopting a teenaged son that were incredibly difficult.

Lainie hadn’t had the benefit of seventeen years to get to know Justin, and when she wanted to understand, but couldn’t, she felt like she was failing.

One of the concerns that played on her mind the most was his casual disinterest in the adoption process. She wanted him to be informed, to be involved, to _want_ what they wanted, for him and with him. But when she explained the process to him, researching each step and what would be involved, who would want to speak with him and the topics they would want to cover, often, he would simply raise a shoulder in a compliant shrug, or nod his head agreeably. Occasionally, there was the flash of a smile, a brief comment – _sure, no problems_ or _yeah, no, whatever_ \- but it all seemed to wash over him so casually that Lainie began to worry that they had asked too much of him, that he had accepted their offer only to be polite, in some kind of attempt to please them, or sense of obligation. 

That he thought he had to say yes, or they wouldn’t let him stay.

“I don’t think so,” Matt said, sitting up in bed with his glasses perched at the end of his nose, placing his thumb between the pages to mark his spot, two-thirds of the way through a paperback copy of _the Glass Castle_. “My best guess – he doesn’t want to get his hopes up.” He cast a sideways glance at Lainie, sitting beside him, her laptop open on her knees, a submission open in the background behind a web browser with several tabs for parenting advice websites. “He’s used to being disappointed. And this is a pretty big thing to be disappointed about, if it doesn’t work out.” He raised his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a reassuring smile. “Right?”

Bridget agreed with his assessment.

“Think about how much in his life has been temporary,” she suggested, the sounds of an announcement over a supermarket PA system in the background. “He’s got to learn it’s OK to trust that good things can happen to him, and that they won’t be taken away.” There was a clinking of glass bottles bumping shoulders, wine bottles, Lainie guessed with a smile. “And speaking of good things – when do I get to meet my new nephew? He seems like the kinda kid who would vibe with a cool, spinster aunt type.” 

They were right, of course.

Lainie tried to focus on the small wins, because they were beautiful, and abundant, and special to her in the way that Clay’s firsts had been – his first steps, first words, first laugh. She treasured this new collection of moments, and kept them side by side, in her memory, and in her heart.

The afternoon when they went out to the boy’s room – the workshop, the carriage house, the _outhouse_ , as they had taken to calling it – to take a look at the progress the contractors had made, and it was just the beginnings of the structure, some interior walls to close in a small bathroom, the cabinetry for the kitchenette, the built-in shelving where the beds would be, but Justin looked over his shoulder at her, and his grin was bright with anticipation, in a way she had never seen him look forward to anything before.

The amused smirk, the first time that Justin was grounded for breaking curfew, and the way that he tried to school his features, to take the punishment as seriously as Matt was, but he couldn’t quite wash the glee from brightening his eyes.

The night he offered to cook dinner, and invited Zach, with their permission, and the other boy had brought her flowers – from a gas station, but sweetly perfumed and presented bashfully – that she had arranged in a vase while Justin pulled a tray from the oven and asked Matt if he would check the consistency of his gravy. 

The grin on his face – despite that they lost – when she and Matt went to watch his first home game. 

The first night that the boys were to sleep in the outhouse, and while Clay had gone out to a punk show with Cyrus, Justin had joined them in the sunroom to watch a movie. And when Matt had gone to refill the popcorn bowl – tucking the remote control into the back pocket of his jeans with a wink – Justin had turned to her from where he sat on the floor at the foot of the sofa, and said, “I think you might be worried. About me? About what I said, you know – about sex?” Her heart had skipped a beat, and he must have seen it in her expression, because he continued, quickly. It’s- it’s not something that’s happening now, so you don’t have to worry. And- and I want to talk about it. To tell you. I just… I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t have the words – yet.” She had reached to cradle the side of his face in her hand, and he had leaned into it, and hadn’t tried to cover what he was feeling with a smile. 

The first time he called her Lainie, instead of Mrs Jensen.

The morning that she stepped out of the bathroom, scraping her hair into a high tail to head out for a Sunday morning run, and as she had trotted down the stairs, heard the cadenced bass thud of music playing outside. Clay’s taste in music rarely strayed from obscure indie bands that became uncool the instant that too many people had heard of them, and Justin tended to be easy-going about what they listened to, enough to allow Clay to choose, most of the time. 

In any event, Matt had said, while she was sitting on the edge of the bed, tying the laces of her running shoes, that he was going to take the boys out for coffee. 

Curious, Lainie followed the sound of the music to the backyard.

Justin had pushed the outdoor furniture to the outskirts of the alfresco area to make room and, to the chunky rhythm of a gangster rap song that instantly sparked off memories for Lainie of college parties, drinking spirits and smoking thin, hand-rolled joints in frat houses, was breathing heavily and cursing as he pushed through a repetition of high-knees. Wandering down the back stairs, Lainie watched as he pushed to raise his knees to the height of his open palms, held out at his waist, and huffed along with the song on each exhale, breezing through the explicit lyrics with familiarity.

She wasn’t sure if he heard her steps behind him, or saw her reflection in the window of the outhouse, but Justin turned suddenly, startled, and stumbled, cursing. 

“Oh, fuck,” he scrambled for his phone, fumbling it awkwardly as he rushed to correct his language, a recently developed habit. “I mean – shit – sorry.” He jabbed simultaneously at the pause button and the volume, and eventually, one or the other muted the song. Cheeks flushed, he offered an embarrassed, apologetic shrug. “Sorry,” he repeated. “That was… inappropriate. I, uh- I thought everyone was out.”

Lainie chuckled, shaking her head.

“It’s OK,” she reassured him, smiling when he cast her a hesitant look. “I thought you boys were all going out for coffee?”

He ducked his head, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, I, uh-“ Justin waved a hand, giving in to his embarrassment and explaining, plainly. “I fuc-“ he self-corrected again, quicker this time. “I suck. At football practice, I suck. I mean, Luke outweighs me by about a hundred pounds, I literally weigh as much of one of his legs, and he can do more high-knees than I can.” He shook his head, propping both hands on his hips and huffing a frustrated breath, his face and neck sticky with sweat. “I just… Zach vouched for me, and I don’t want to let him down.”

Lainie smiled gently. She knew that it wasn’t only about Zach, although he and Justin were close. It was also about Coach Kerba, who Justin spoke about the way that boys had once spoken about her father. 

Reassurances swelled inside of her - the urge to tell him that he was healthier than she had ever seen him, that he had meat on his bones from regular meals and muscle tone from working out with Zach over the summer, and that they suited him, that whatever he could do, it was enough, and if he wanted to work harder, do better, he should do it for himself – but she tamped them all down. She had learned, through trial and error, that he felt smothered by excessive praise, even when honest and heartfelt, embarrassed and armoured against kind and reassuring words. He was far more receptive to actions – to being supported, and through it, coming to those realisations on his own. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you listening to that kind of music before,” she commented, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah,” he lifted his shoulder in an awkward shrug, glancing at her, and then away. “I guess it’s something I used to listen to when I was a kid.”

It was one of those little tripwires, they were becoming less frequent now, the traps that they activated less vicious and inescapable, but it still happened from time to time – one of them would blindly, unintentionally, stumble into a memory of Amber. Lainie had realised, with practice, that it was only awkward if she allowed it to be – that Justin would take his cues from her – and so she kept her expression neutral and interested, even if, behind it, she imagined Justin, small and grubby but grinning, probably sitting in the front of the car with no booster seat, but hopefully at least wearing a seatbelt, blissfully ignorant of what exactly the lyrics of the song meant and bright with glee, at his mother’s side. 

“I get it,” Lainie said, casually, and slid her own phone from the pocket of her jacket. It took a moment to figure out how to disconnect the audio feed from her earbuds – usually Matt set those sorts of things up for her – and offered, “We all have pump up songs.”

She smiled at him, tapping the ‘play’ button.

_Kitana,  
Kitana,  
Kitana,  
Kitana_

Justin raised his eyebrows at the bass-heavy trip-hop track, pursing his lips at the accented and unapologetic explicit lyrics. 

“Where’d you hear that?” he asked with an amused chuckle as he listened, bobbing his head. “I mean, it’s cool. I like it, but-“

Lainie shrugged her shoulders, offering a conspiratorial smile.

“Us parents aren’t as hopelessly lame as you kids think, you know?” She hit ‘pause’, and started to tuck her phone back into her pocket, but hesitated, looking up at him, his blue _Property of Liberty Tigers_ t-shirt. “I was heading out on a run to the lookout point.” It had been a long time since she had attended a football training session, and she knew there was a lot more to it than sprints, but even still, a small pang of nostalgia sparked in her chest as she asked, “Would you want to join me?”

Justin offered a slow, dimpled grin.

“Sure,” he agreed, slipping his phone into the pocket of his basketball shorts with a cheeky quirk of his eyebrow. “But you’ve gotta share your playlist with me.”

“Deal,” Lainie accepted, happily, and then hesitated, looking down at her phone. “But, uh-“ she shook her head, clueless, and offered it to him with a chuckle. ”-you’ll have to show me how to do that.”

They ran side by side at a comfortable pace, unhurried, balanced so that Justin could keep up without feeling as if he was slowing her down, and the streets around them were sleepy and quiet. Morning dew clung to lawns and fenceposts, neighbourhood cats sunned themselves in the warmth of the rays beginning to crest over the rooftops, and the low hum of distant traffic grew steadily as their sneakers pounded a rhythmic pattern on the asphalt. 

The hiker’s path through the woods was deserted early on a Sunday morning and still cool and damp in the shadows of the pine trees that lined the way. At the top of the lookout point, where the cliff fell away, craggy and rough-edged at the precipice, a wooden park bench faced out over the county and, after a few quick stretches to keep the ankle she had injured cheerleading in high school from playing up on the way back, Lainie sat, waving for Justin to take a seat beside her. He eased himself down onto the bench and gazed around the quiet lookout, sweat gleaming at his hairline.

“What do you normally do, when you come up here?”

Lainie peered out over the spiderweb of streets, the stretch of green melting into asphalt and concrete and glass, a few landmarks visible amongst the sprawl – the signage atop the Crestmont, the steel spine of Hickman’s bridge, the bulk of the Mercy Hospital complex looming at the town’s edge, the bright green swathes of the football pitch and Walker Field. The town was cast in light-edged shadow, the sun rising gradually and gently rousing its residents as the trees whispered quietly behind them, birds trilling brightly in the distance. 

“Just sit quietly, I guess,” she said, looking out over Evergreen, all at once a cruel and lovely place. “Think about things.”

Justin shifted at her left, his hand coming to rest on the wooden slats of the bench between them, his fingers curling beneath its edge, as if he felt as though he needed to anchor himself to something. For a long time, he was silent, just breathing beside her. 

“Would it be OK if we talked?” he asked, quietly, his gaze cast out over the cliff’s edge at the slowly awakening town below. “I think I have the words, now.”

Lainie looked at him – _her son_ , she thought, for the first time without reservation – and when he looked back at her, hesitant but not afraid, she lay her hand gently over his on the bench between them. 

“Of course, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting! This is the last part to finish off this mini-fic. I hope that the ending was satisfying.
> 
> Thank you to comfortwriter28 for the beta checking, encouragement and chats. Check out his fic [ Step Bros ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859872/chapters/62831203), if you're not already reading it. 
> 
> For anyone interested:
> 
> [ This ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGx6K90TmCI) is the song that Justin was working out to, from the [ Spotify playlist ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2cIxX0XdCJDJcpoFhHbcPq) Netflix released for him. 
> 
> [ This ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll0XbB3GxuA) is the song that Lainie shows him in return, which she overheard Amelia and Monty listening to.
> 
> The next mini-fic, Rodeo, will look at the friendship between Diego and Monty that is referenced repeatedly in S4, but never shown or explained. The draft is finished, so the first part shouldn't be too far away.
> 
> Thank you again for reading x


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